On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 20:24:20 GMT, animaux wrote:

On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 02:36:09 GMT, "JanTGH" opined:

I have some small young trees, oaks, elm, pear, and a crepe myrtle. When
should they be pruned and by how much and where?

Thanks!


I prune live oaks in dead of winter, or August.

I was curious about this a couple of weeks ago: summer or winter?
Surely, I thought, one should be preferable. Came across an article by
the McLennan county agent where he reasons that the ideal time to
prune live oaks is late winter.

First, since August is becoming more and more a time of high drought
stress for trees, and since pruning is itself a stressful event, doing
so in August adds additional stress at just the wrong time. Also,
since live oak may drop some leaves after in response to pruning
stress, late winter allows it to coincide most closely with the
natural spring leaf fall for live oak.

Anyway, reading this thread led me to recall that interesting article.
Passing it on fwiw... :-)