Monkey puzzle tree

Hi everyone, new yesterday and new to gardening.i have a lovely monkey puzzle tree but the bottom branches are very low and a hazard to my 2 dogs and anyone who walks near it.can it be prooned ?

 

Yes, they can be pruned, though in UK, bottom branches often fall off anyway, and we don't get them showing their impressive form clothed to the ground. Just make sure you prune it with a nice clean cut to avoid disease.

 

Now is as good a time as any. You'll get lots of resin bleeding from the cut branch bases, that's normal.

 

thank you for the reply.do you know if there is any special angle to proon and should i sterilize the cutters first ? thanks again for your help.

 

hi, thank you for your reply. the branches are very close to the ground already but not showing any sign of falling off. should my prooning be done with sterilized cutters? thanks again

 

First of all you can use a saw , but first thing is cut a good 3/4 off the branch that you want to remove , this will help reduce the weight and give you more space.. once that is done I take the branch off very close to the trunk so I leave nothing left to rot etc , I also under cut first so no tearing of the bark happens If the saw is clean or loppers should be fine but you could rub over with alcahol or something similar..... you may have sap comomg out but nothing to worry about and then the tree has got the rest of the year to start healing over

Spruce

 

hi,thats great advice thank you very much.

 

Use dilute Jeyes Fluid for sterilising stuff, if you need to. I doubt it'd be such an issue for a resinous tree though, but that's just my gut feel. (Any experts know?)

 

thank you i will try it.