Ponderosa Pine—With Same Wire for 10 Years
It’s true. I’ve a pine with the same wire on it for 10 years. We often hear talk of removing the wire on our trees in the fall. The question is, when they are not in danger of biting in, why take the wires off? Sometimes, the thinking is, it’s to protect from damage from cold—which, […]
Wiring Prep: All At Once Or Piecemeal?
This is a question that dogged me in my early years… Do we clean out and trim shoots over the whole tree before we wire? Or do it branch by branch as we wire? Being a huge fan of simplifying, it made sense to me to do all one thing first and then move on […]
You Don’t Need to Remove ALL the Wire…
…all at once. Fall is a good time to check on what wires may be biting in on the branches. If you see some, don’t go for the default of taking it all off. That is very often a simple waste of your past work, the work you did putting it on. The middle of […]
When Is It OK To Have Wire Biting In?
Too much of a good thing can be sad. Just enough is useful. Too little and it doesn’t work. For wiring, we want the middle one, just enough. Blogs are wonderful for making grand statements that have marginal utility, unhinged to useful reality. Hopefully photos will clarify this commentary about what is just enough… The wire […]
90 Year-Old Black Pine Wired by Bobby Curttright-
This Japanese Black Pine, Pinus thunbergii, was wired by Bobby Curttright. Bobby has been my apprentice for over 2 1/2 years now, and his wiring is becoming quite accomplished. The necessary fine attention to detail reaches a level of nerd-dom with the best wire wranglers. He’s been a quick study with it, and his organization and […]
Wire Woes–When to Remove Wire
We read it all the time. ‘Take wire off before it bites in.’ Many of us actually do this. And only about half the time is it actually what we should do. So. Wire. On branches. Big problem, right? To make it simple, the question of when to remove wire is actually broken down into […]
Beware Bending that Branch-
Many years ago I held a conifer branch in my hand in a totally shocked moment after it had literally shattered while testing it for flexibility. Eons passed. When I returned to breathing normally, the branch was still in my hand, and the tree was a couple feet away, because I had stood up. I […]
Michael Hagedorn 