Treating Tree-Pruning and Stripped Bark Wounds: How the Pros Do It
The bark of a tree is very much like human skin. It protects everything inside and keeps everything inside moist and functioning. If the bark is accidentally or intentionally cut or damaged, the tree could suffer. Even when tree doctors and tree services lop limbs and cut branches, they are quick to repair the wounds left behind in order to protect the tree and keep it healthy. If you do some of your own pruning, cutting, and lopping, you should follow suit with tree wound care. Here is how the pros do it.
Clean Cuts and Tree Bark Sealer
For limbs about the size of a quarter in diameter to about the breadth of a human hand, these cuts made by you (or a tree service) are often clean cut. Clean cuts are necessary because they will help the tree heal faster (much like removing dead tissue in a human wound helps it heal faster). Then you will need to spray or paint on a special wound sealer made just for trees. It often goes on green or brown, then fades away over time as the tree closes over these spots. If the tree has bigger cuts or more severe damage, you will need a different product or process to help the tree.
Larger Cuts or Damage
If you cut some really big limbs from the tree that are just dragging your tree downward, the tree will regain a more upright shape. While the tree springs back into a more vertical position, you can help heal the bigger cuts with tree tape. Be sure to wind the tree tape tightly around the area where the large limb was cut. The tree tape will be sticky, so you may need extra help if your tree has a large girth. This keeps invading insects out and prevents sun scorch while the tree heals itself.
As for really large areas of damage, you can use the tree tape for this as well, but you may need more than one roll of tree tape. If there is any bark laying around by the tree that was once on the tree, try to replace it on the tree in an area where it looks like the bark came from. Make sure the bark faces the same direction as the rest of the tree bark, and tape it in place with tree tape. The tree's natural sap will begin to ooze out and reattach the loose bark pieces, healing it like a skin graft on human flesh.
For more tips on tree pruning, talk to professionals like Carlos Tree Service Inc.