Tree Pruning in Strathfieldsaye, and What It Leaves Behind

Most pages about tree pruning in Strathfieldsaye begin with the cuts. We are starting at the other end, with what is on the ground when the crew leaves, because on acreage that matters nearly as much as the pruning itself.

What is left when the pruning is done

The mulch

Box and ironbark chip coarse and last for years on paths, garden beds, stable surrounds and the muddy patch by the trough. We blow it into a pile wherever you want it, or it leaves on the truck. In the bushfire overlay keep it off the walls of the house. If a job does not give you enough, we also sell bulk mulch.

The firewood

Red ironbark, grey box and yellow box are about as good as firewood gets in Victoria: dense, slow burning, high heat, and dead limbs out of a mature tree are often half seasoned already. We cut it to suit your heater and our wood splitting service can split the rounds on the spot. Stacked off the ground with air through it, green timber is ready in a year to eighteen months. Need more than the tree gave you? There is our firewood supply.

The habitat

Strathfieldsaye sits inside the Bendigo Box-Ironbark region, and the old trees on your block are the ones with hollows. Where a dead limb is not over the house, a shed or somewhere people stand, we would rather shorten it than remove it. A reduced stag limb still holds a hollow; a log pile at the back of the block houses skinks and beetles. A lot of people bought here for the bush, and pruning can respect that.

The pruning work itself

Deadwooding is the most common request on acreage: taking dead limbs out of mature box and ironbark before summer storms do it, starting with those over drives, sheds and horse yards.

Crown thinning removes a proportion of the smaller branches evenly through the crown so wind passes through rather than pushing on a sail. Stripping the inside and leaving tufts on the ends is lion-tailing, and it makes limbs more likely to break.

Crown lifting takes off the lowest limbs so the truck, the float or the mower fits underneath and so grass fire cannot climb straight into the canopy.

Formative pruning is for the young trees going into every new garden and nature strip in the estates: one clean leader, no included bark where two stems compete, no branches heading for the gutter. Small, cheap work that saves a reduction twenty years later.

Powerline clearance here usually means the private line from the road pole to the house. It is the owner's job to keep it clear, the work needs a trained crew, and close to the conductors it may need the line isolated first.

Fruit trees on the older blocks get their own timing: apples and pears in winter while dormant, apricots and plums after harvest in the dry of summer to keep disease out of the cuts, and citrus lightly once the frosts are done.

Every cut follows AS 4373: just outside the branch collar, no flush cuts, no stubs, no wound paint, no more removed than the tree can cope with. If size rather than health is the problem, that is a reduction, covered under tree lopping in Strathfieldsaye.

Local conditions around Strathfieldsaye

The suburb drains to Sheepwash Creek from forested ridges with soils that shed water rather than hold it, so trees on the flats sit wet through winter and everything bakes from December. That swing is why mature box on so many blocks carries deadwood: the trees drop limbs they cannot support through the dry. Red ironbark on the stony rises copes better but holds its dead limbs for years, and they come down in the first big blow.

The other half of the suburb is new. Strathfieldsaye grew by roughly a quarter between the last two censuses, and estates such as Emu Rise along Emu Creek Road and Tannery Fields are full of gardens planted in the last few years. Those young trees are at the stage where formative pruning does the most good, and the remnant box left through subdivision needs lifting and clearance from roofs it was never meant to be near.

Out on Tannery Lane and along Strathfieldsaye Road the holdings still run to several hectares, with sugar gum and cypress windbreaks, pepper trees over the stables and paddock trees that drop limbs on fences. Much of that land sits under the Bushfire Management Overlay, with the Mandurang section of the Greater Bendigo National Park to the south, so pruning there is about separation: deadwood out, low limbs up, canopy back from the roof, all done before the fire danger period. Vegetation and environmental overlays can also apply near the bush and some work needs a permit; TB'S Trees checks with the City of Greater Bendigo and tells you first.

A typical Strathfieldsaye pruning job

A hectare and a half off Strathfieldsaye Road, four remnant grey box and a yellow gum around the house and shed, inside the bushfire overlay. The owner wants the deadwood out, the canopy lifted off the roof, the hollow limb on the far tree left alone, and the firewood kept. The chipper sits on the drive, the climber works through each tree deadwooding and lifting, and the ground crew chips the brush and cuts the limb wood to heater lengths. The hollow limb is shortened, not removed. By early afternoon there is a chip pile for the garden, a firewood stack beside the shed, and five trees that will stand through summer without dropping anything on the house.

We do the same work over the boundary with tree pruning in Junortoun, towards our base with tree pruning at Axedale, and in town with tree pruning across Bendigo. For hedges, see hedge trimming in Strathfieldsaye; for a tree past pruning, see tree removal in Strathfieldsaye. The main tree pruning service page explains each technique further, and the Strathfieldsaye suburb page covers everything else we do here.

Tree pruning in Strathfieldsaye: what people want to know