00:02 [Music]
00:14 hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the auto accident attorneys podcast where we take care of
00:19 you as always it's sponsored by the auto accident attorneys group I'm your host attorney Ali on social media at attorney
00:27 Ali today I am joined by someone that I recently met because of a case and
00:35 speaking to her quickly became a huge fan Christy Bryant with speaking for the
00:40 trees and you can find her on Tik Tok at speaking for trees that's it that
00:47 simple christe thank you so much I know that it was a about an hour drive to get to our office today it's Atlanta
00:54 everything's an hour drive well I really appreciate you coming and I you I'm so excited to actually be able to talk to
00:60 you in in person uh after when we initially met we were discussing some
01:05 issues around a a tragic case that our firm is handling then I started following you on social media and I fell
01:13 in love with everything that you do and I became fascinated uh before we started recording I was telling you I I I didn't
01:19 realize I was a fan of trees until I saw banion trees yeah so now I'm especially like the root system yeah see so if you
01:27 wouldn't mind um to kick us off just give us a little bit of background about you and and who it is that I have the
01:33 pleasure of speaking to today yeah so uh my name is Christy Bryant um I am an
01:38 arborist but I came into a bore culture via Landscaping so I've been working in
01:44 people's jars for about 25 years so um I've seen all the good and all the bad all the mistakes and all the really good
01:50 stuff that people have done um and then you know I just moved into trees and I
01:56 never really even knew how much I loved trees until all of a sudden um I'm in
02:02 charge of their care and the first eight years of my life in abor culture was actually working for removal companies
02:08 and having to remove trees and after about five years with with Gunnison tree it was a an Atlanta founded company I
02:15 was like you know I just can't do this anymore I don't want to kill them anymore I let other people do that and
02:22 I'm GNA save them so um because of my relationship with Gunnison or my my job with Gunnison it was an easy we had a
02:30 book of builders that we did tree removals for so it was easy to just get involved with them and start writing
02:37 their prescriptions because yes I write prescriptions on trees isn't that fun so started getting involved with Builders
02:43 and writing prescriptions on trees and actually getting to do the nitty-gritty every day of getting to to save trees I
02:49 mean I actually go out and do my own treatments and um and you know do the fun stuff to do with trees um I do a lot
02:57 of tree inventory so you know I get paid to walk around the wood woods and hug trees literally my hug is 18 inches so I
03:03 walk around the woods hugging trees so it's a hard life I live um self-employed
03:09 and I love to travel um and trees are very what most people don't understand
03:14 about trees are trees are very cultural and um those cultures are in in
03:20 Switzerland they in Finland poing trees is a practice that they use because
03:26 their average temperature is 74 degrees and they want the sunshine shine in on their cafes whereas South Georgia we
03:34 need all that tree canopy we can get because most of you know so trees are very cultural and I've learned so much
03:40 about trees by traveling trying to travel the world learning about trees so it's really cool and I and I try to
03:46 bring back all that I learned back to Atlanta and open my mind and to think maybe there is a way besides the way we
03:52 think about trees in Atlanta um so it's been it's a fun adventure that's amazing I I'm fascinated by everything that
04:00 you've been posting uh one of the videos I saw just this morning uh on my way
04:06 into the office it was you work with a lot of developers it looks like because
04:12 um one thing I want to know is if it is the minority of developers that do this
04:17 or if it's a requirement but making sure that there's a tree plan yes is that now
04:23 like a a city requirement so yeah every like everybody but cob County which is
04:28 the county of my birth in the county in which I reside and it makes me mad has tree protection where we are today has
04:33 tree protection ordinances and what that is saying is that we as a municipality
04:40 have decided that trees are important in fact if you read the first couple lines of every tree ordinance it it says
04:47 because trees sequester carbon make for prettier neighborhoods it's it's that's the reason people the municipality
04:54 decides to protect trees so inside of a tree protection ordinance that could be anywhere from protecting you from
05:00 removing trees in your own yard that you have to prove it's bad before you remove it um or it could be if you're going to
05:08 build a new house or add a pool then you have to have an arborist involved to verify what's on site to verify what's
05:15 going to be impacted in a lot of ways this protects your neighbors or protects you as a neighbor from the construction
05:21 next door um because they can't just do prote you know they they have to protect
05:26 your tree while they're doing construction on it and for out here in the land of no protections like my
05:33 neighbor came in I woke up one morning and there's you know big machine sounds and I go running outside and he's cut I
05:40 don't know three no probably 30 inches away from the trunk of a huge popper
05:45 tree that is 5 foot away from my bedroom and there's Roots 5 six Ines tall being
05:51 dug up and I'm like what the freak are you doing you can't do that you're you're going to kill us and that
05:58 wouldn't have happened technically it wouldn't have happened if we were in an area where somebody
06:03 bothered to care about our trees and protecting and protecting us so on the the clip that I saw it looked like it
06:09 was new development and you had brought someone out for the first thing that you showed you had a a high-tech piece of
06:15 equipment it was an orange bucket yeah and then you had brought someone out and I couldn't I couldn't follow along from
06:22 from what I understood uh you were making it so that the tree would stop growing yeah yeah
06:30 tell me about that okay so it's really cool so trees have energy buckets okay so trees have a certain amount of energy
06:37 that they can expend and it has different places where it goes defending it has to defend against Decay it has to
06:44 defend its leaves against fungus it has to do defend defend defend defend defend has to stand up straight it has to grow
06:51 has to reproduce it has all these things but it's basically four energy buckets that it has and one of those energy
06:57 buckets is top is growth Okay so in the in the fall trees are putting their energy into root growth and in the
07:03 summer spring summer it's spring it's flowering summer it's growing in branchy loation so if I can shut down one of
07:12 those energy buckets by 70% then I have increased the energy that the tree has
07:18 by 33 35% in the other bucket areas right so if we know that we are going to
07:24 impact the critical brute Zone which what that means is we are going to remove whatever percentage of those
07:30 roots so in the city of Atlanta if you're impacting a tree more than 20% you have to have an arborist involved so
07:36 20 is about the cut off right so if we're going to impact a tree by more than 20% we're harming it what happens
07:43 is we apply the chemical plant growth regulator that shuts down the trees need
07:49 to grow at the top so it can then redistribute the energy and use all of
07:54 that saved energy to replace the feeder roots that we just cut off or compacted or removed and some way from the from
08:01 the tree that's fascinating I know it's Thank You Scientist thank you tree scien unable I've got two questions one how do
08:10 you measure percentage how do you know you're impacting 20% of the roots great good question critical root zone is a
08:16 mathematical formula based on that tree ordinance's math okay so each tree
08:22 ordinance it's based on the diameter of the tree when we talk about trees we don't talk about trees in height we talk
08:28 about trees in dbh or diam at breast height so 4 and 1/2 ft from the ground
08:33 because everybody's breasts are different it's 4 and 1/2 ft from the ground from grade is where we measure a
08:38 tree so if it's a 20in diameter tree and that ordinance says it's 1T per inch
08:45 then that radious circle is 20 fet that has to be protected so I see technically
08:51 in nature think about it just being drip light to drip line and that would be the critical root zone so that if you're
08:57 working out in your front yard this weekend and you want to lay some s and you want to think oh chrisy where am I
09:03 take that whole canopy drip line to drip line make that your 100% And then you know figure out what you're removing
09:10 when you're saying drip line that is the furthest point out that the roots are going in the ground yes but it's the
09:16 furthest uh branches where the leaves are oh I see so you you measure by
09:21 looking up actually no we measure the diameter okay technically and then when
09:26 we're doing a site plan a technical Builder site plan it's going to be whatever that ordinance is it's going to
09:31 be a circle on a site plan so there'll be a DOT where the tree trunk is and then it'll be a circle around it and
09:40 that circle is a critical root zone so then the site planner is like okay my house is going to go here so it's going
09:46 to go 30% into that critical root zone so so now we have an arborist involved
09:51 because my house foundation's going under the under that tree I never you know when when the leaves fall in the
09:59 fall and then winter is there everything looks dead I never had given consideration of the fact that the tree
10:05 is still alive and and using its energy it's just using its energy underground to have a stronger root system I thought
10:12 it was just dormant I thought it was like a bear and hibernation most of them are dormant in winter but in Fall um
10:19 which is Fall's the best time to plant trees the best time to fertilize trees it is not the best time to prune mature
10:25 trees in your cities so um fall I think fall is good for underground for your
10:31 trees I see I want you to do your above ground stuff in the winter if you can in the winter or spring so spring is okay
10:39 spring is okay as long as is the cut off as long as it hasn't started New Growth up top so there's two different schools
10:46 of thought okay and um so this one school of thought is the tree is dormant
10:53 and so is everything else that could be harmful to the tree so all of our fungal
10:58 spores are dormant all our mean little bugs that could attack tree or dormant so nothing can attack the tree but the
11:04 tree also isn't awake to defend itself so there's the one school of thought and up until about the past six months that
11:12 was my school of thought and then you know you learn and you read and I read an article and I was like because I had
11:18 always thought in the back of my mind but it's not awake it can't steal wounds like it you know um and then I read this
11:25 article and it was talking about how it's not really great to prune in the winter because the tree can't seal
11:31 wounds so trees have this really cool process it's a four-step process when they're wounded or when they're damaged
11:37 okay and part of that process is building up chemicals so if you've ever everybody's going to go out this weekend
11:42 and look at their firewood so if you're ever looking at firewood okay and you see those cool um lines black lines of
11:50 delineation inside of the wood and you notice like one side is really pungy and the other side is really strong that is
11:56 the tree Fung that's the tree chemicals fighting the the Fung es from the
12:01 environment and there's just constant trees are constantly fighting constantly
12:06 defending themselves constantly trying to stay upright and healthy their own tree antibodies in a sense absolutely
12:12 that's amazing yeah they're pretty cool so when did we have the technology to to
12:18 have these chemicals or these medicines I don't know what to call them to be able so most of Tree Care started like
12:26 in the 80s um and the plant growth regulator that we used is um was actually developed by the utility
12:33 industry actually no no no okay that was actually developed to be a systemic
12:39 fungicide okay so Leaf funguses are very funguses period are hard to deal with
12:44 you ever had mold in your house right funguses are just hell so imagine taking it outside and trying to deal with a
12:49 fungus outside where you can't control anything so the best way that we can
12:55 deal with any kind of plant issues is systemically to get the chemicals straight to the place where we need it system insecticides think about it we're
13:01 getting it straight to where the insect bit it and then the insect's getting it there's not a lot of environmental implications because we're not just
13:07 spraying something around so systemics is really the way to go but we they did
13:13 there wasn't a good systemic fungicide so the industry developed this thing
13:19 well it wasn't very effective as a systemic fungicide in fact there's there's only one that's proven any
13:25 really good things and it's not yet out on the market come on FDA get off your butts we need this disapprove but they
13:31 noticed that it actually held back the growth of the plants it said then the
13:36 utility industry is like hey we need you and so the utility industry picked it up
13:42 their scientists took off with that and now we have um the brand name is cisat
13:48 or shortstop um but the chemical that shuts down the growth in the trees and it actually really saves trees because
13:53 it does all kinds of other groovy side effects like it makes the leaf cuticle stronger so the actual Leaf is thick
13:60 so that that plant accidentally um is more resistant to funguses on the leaf
14:06 because the cuticles F and then another byproduct is drought tolerance because we've taken away this desire to grow
14:12 we've taken away the water use of the tree so they're more drought tolerant urban areas it reduces cambial growth so
14:19 you can keep those trees in those tight areas longer because you're reducing the
14:25 growth so all kinds of cool different implications came from this one little experiment that's unbelievable it's
14:31 really cool I need an education on some of the vocabulary what's what is the cuticle cuticle would be um the uh it's
14:39 a it's a p a part of the leaf okay it's it's a portion of the leaf a part of the leaf uh like the the skin part of it
14:46 think about like the cuticle of the skin yeah like it's going to be the yeah that kind of the outer area oh on the okay so
14:52 so that the the green is going to be thicker so that funguses can't penetrate
14:57 the green to get in there and God it and then the we were talking about trees in
15:03 the city the Cambria with camb so cambial growth is diameter growth of the
15:08 trunk and the branches in the underground structure Roots you can control that with this yep shortstop
15:16 shortstop or cat yeah um I always mispronounce it so I don't want to do it on a podcast but the chemical name is
15:21 like polyu so that's unbelievable my default uh mode I spent a lot of time in
15:28 California know so I'm thinking let things be natural let things be holistic
15:34 this is actually something that is helpful yes for tree we're we're injecting them this is my my brain going
15:41 sideways on it if we didn't intervene would
15:47 trees develop uh sort of like the survival of the fittest would would trees end up changing are we somehow
15:55 keeping trees in existence no okay um what we're doing is we're
16:01 making it where we can live with trees all right so all of the bad things bad things that trees do to
16:09 people would that does that matter if it's in the middle of the woods if a tree falls in the middle of the woods
16:14 does it matter does it harm anything I guess not no okay so we have to have
16:21 Arbors because we have to live in trees we have to live with trees we have to we have moved oursel into their Forest okay
16:28 and um we have to live with trees because of that you know and so a Bor culture is based on making sure that
16:34 people can live with trees so trees would be being trees I mean we would have Dutch on disease that would wipe
16:40 through and wipe out trees but if you think about almost everything that destroys trees it's because Man became
16:46 involved Emerald ashb is an evasive spe it's an evasive insect that we have here that is over in the US is killing it
16:53 that it's killing everybody we have natural Predators it's killing ash trees everywhere the Midwest almost has no ash
16:59 trees left um that wouldn't be here if it wasn't brought off brought over on a pallet so it's so much of what we have
17:07 to deal with INRI is because we did it right we messed them up so then we are
17:13 having to treat for anal dashbo because we brought Emerald ashb over so we this solution that my feeble mind not knowing
17:21 anything about trees where I was thinking well we're intervening maybe where we shouldn't we're actually intervening because we've created the
17:27 problem in a lot of cases yeah I see yeah would it matter if that big white oak behind your house fell if your house
17:33 wasn't there no maybe to the tree under it right maybe to a couple squirrels but that's it it's not going to kill you
17:39 it's not going to harm your family it's not going to create a real risk right this is so much fun for me to figure out
17:45 I love it so like I mentioned earlier one of my favorite trees is the banan tree and the reason I'm so infatuated by
17:52 it is because of the the way that the The Vines come off of the branches and
17:57 then go back into the ground Roots they're aerial Roots I don't call them Vines nope they're aerial Roots they
18:03 roots of the planet and they go back into the ground and then they they stick
18:09 together I don't know the for yeah I don't know that much about the Bion tree um but I do know that it's an aerial root tree and that that's why it just it
18:16 just keeps growing and big and so much bigger because they like the truck is like on those roots right and it looks
18:24 to me like the more aerial roots that it has that goes back into the soil it gets
18:29 a a more stable and a stronger Foundation sure the roots just make it
18:35 stronger and stronger and I'm looking at the badge on your shirt with the George arborist with all of the roots yeah and
18:41 it makes me wonder at one point in time I remember hearing that trees
18:47 communicate or like in the ground there's a lot of communication Network going on can you tell me about that so
18:53 the first off the one thing I'm want to say is the Georgia arur Association this is a very well fought out logo we
18:60 actually have a shirt that's a lot better but we actually have a on the shirt we actually have a ruler to the
19:06 side that shows 6 Ines and if you look closely these roots are not going down they are going out because the one of
19:13 the major misunderstandings about tree roots especially in clay soils but as
19:19 far as I understand at all these International conferences I go to that it's most of the world has tree roots
19:25 that only go down in the top six to eight inches of soil so it was very important for us as a Georgia Arbor
19:31 Association if we're going to show Roots we're going to show them correctly so remember that guys that you don't have
19:38 Deep Roots we have very shallow root systems and they go further out so when
19:44 we're talking about trees and digging and construction like that's people don't understand that my Builders will
19:50 call me up say they gave me a word of violation and I didn't we weren't anywhere near that tree and I roll up
19:55 and I'm like there's tracks up to three feet from the trunk and I'm like the rots are the most important part of
20:01 the tree where you know repete and repeat it's like you don't know what you're talking about
20:06 that's why you have meat how how do they communicate so okay so this is really fun so the feeder roots of the tree um
20:16 again structure roots are the branch likee parts of the tree that grow underground and hold up the tree okay
20:21 the feeder roots are responsible for energy absorption bringing in water and nutrients doing everything else and that
20:27 is the Communication Center of treat but they are helped to communicate by the
20:33 underground Network called microa now microa are beneficial fungi
20:39 bacteria that um that form a symbiotic relationship with the feder roots
20:45 because that's where the sugar is okay so they attach to the feeter roots of the tree for the sugar and the tree
20:51 normally they don't like that like that's what mistletoe does is it's after the sugar in the crown of the tree and it's bad but this time the tree doesn't
20:58 mind it because those little micro wias go out and they form their own little Network and so they're allowing the tree
21:06 communication between the feeder roots to happen very much better and faster
21:11 through that micro risal Network so it's the onetime fungus is really good another cool thing if you've ever eaten
21:17 a Chantell mushroom you are eating the flowering part of the very important microa oh wow now very fun that's
21:25 incredible I did not know that I know it's very cool a micro RIS micro Risa yeah micro it's you know it's all a
21:34 plural yeah I think I'm from Georgia what the heck do I know they're helping
21:39 to have the feeder Roots understand what's going on like they're basically
21:45 extending the telephone Network that so like a where I would put
21:51 in additional Wi-Fi in the house like a little booster signal what it's doing but at the same time not only they're
21:57 helping the trees communicate but they help extend the feeder root so that they can take in more water and nutrients
22:04 there are some species of plants that cannot survive without their own special microa and there's gazillions of kinds
22:10 of Indo and exto microa and it's the whole science in it of itself um but it's very important to trees and like um
22:17 if you've ever gone walking in the north Georgia Woods you'll notice um on the ground you'll come upon it's called
22:23 creeping ground Cedar and they're these little like miniature looking trees they're about that tall and they just it
22:28 looks like a little min ature Forest growing on the forest floor that's called creeping ground
22:34 Cedar everybody in the world has wanted to duplicate this because what would be
22:39 cooler to bring into our Landscapes than a pretty little full shade loving Ground
22:45 Covers like the nursery industry is like we need this and everybody in the world's tried to replicate it but you
22:51 can't because it lives with this specific microa and so when you go and dig it up all you're doing is killing
22:56 that you're not going to replicate it you're not going to get those cre ground seaters throw outside of an environment where the microa is present first is
23:03 micro Risa could can you see it you can see it if you dig up if you dig in the
23:09 forest the feeder roots of a tree are going to be just a little Woody and the
23:14 microb Biser are going to be white and they're not going to be Woody at all they're going to be like they're kind of
23:19 they fall apart kind of when you touch them but that's miza they will literally physically attach to the feeder root and
23:26 extend the feeder root but it's a completely separate organism yeah completely separately yeah that's
23:31 fascinating I know that's pretty cool we live in a really cool world is it true that if there's a tree that is sick or
23:38 not getting enough nutrients that other trees nearby will shut down their own supplies so that that sick tree gets
23:46 more of course I don't know the science behind this but if you really want to read about this um the hidden life of
23:52 trees um by a German Forester um and then there's another book by a lady a
23:57 Canadian Forester and she was the one responsible for the like they were actually able to see how fast trees
24:03 respond so yes there is scientific evidence that proves that tree they don't shut down there because they have
24:10 to get their energy they share so they don't shut down what they're doing they just share what they have they're
24:16 sharing their resources I see I I wish I had some mushrooms right now to I know I
24:22 know the the good kind well the other good kind I love this conversation yeah
24:28 so it is Springtime now this was an awesome education thank you uh keeping
24:34 in line with the theme of the podcast about taking care of the community and and providing information that's helpful
24:41 the trees are growing back so technically it's still early enough where people are able to prune yeah or
24:48 even if they needed to remove trees going Shifting the conversation into to removal I know I don't love that right
24:55 it's necessary but if uh maybe one start with removal Al together are there are things that cuz in Atlanta there's
25:03 obviously the city in the forest also huge trees a lot of rainfall we've got
25:09 trees falling onto homes all the time is there any recommendation that you have to identify trees either that are at
25:16 risk that should be removed or is there anything to do preventatively to to maybe stop it from
25:22 happening absolutely if you live in a tree canopy you need to have a relationship with a tree arborist you
25:28 just do um there's a whole different schools of thoughts on if if a arborist
25:33 is associated with a tree company you can't trust what they say because they have a you know they have a bone in the
25:39 fight blah blah blah blah blah I used to believe that wasn't true when I was a sales arborist because like I would never do it and I saw it from a side of
25:46 if I remove this tree now like they're not going to trust me and I can't come back and do anything to it later like to
25:51 me it was very short-sighted um but I know a lot of people believe that and since I've been a Consulting arborist
25:56 I'm sad to say I've seen a lot of not great stuff being done by people that
26:02 are certified arborous the one thing I want to say about using an Isa International Society of aor culture
26:08 certified Arborist is that we have an ethical code of ethics that we sign and
26:14 every time we have to redo our thing we have to resign that code of ethics and
26:20 so if you are a certified arist and you do some scummy stuff you can lose your
26:25 certification um and they have a whole ethics board that looks at all these things and um it's so you know using a
26:33 certified Arbor should make you feel safer um but like all Industries we have
26:39 our bad people um but you know starting off with looking for a certified Arborist or
26:46 company that has a certified Arborist one of the things that I I tell talk to my homeowners about when I'm in a
26:52 residential consultation and we're we're we have to do tree work the next thing I go into is how to choose a tree company
26:59 so how I met you again was because of a very bad bad situation um because the
27:07 people didn't bother to do their homework the homeowner said I don't even know his name I just I just pick up the
27:13 phone and not call him because the whole neighborhood uses him which means a whole neighborhood Bo never bothered to
27:18 check to see if this guy had the minimum that is required by OSHA rules to do
27:24 tree work okay and or inside of the an standards so every industry has the
27:31 American Industry Safety standards the ANZ standards if your safety glasses have to be Anie certified for your you
27:38 know that this is our safety certification thing okay so inside of tree work we have the ANC 133 which is
27:47 safety and that covers what is the what is the standards for safety inside of
27:53 the industry so if you're working in a place that has a tree ordinance they better be
27:58 doing and work according to both the Anie safety standards and the Andy standards for how to do tree work okay
28:05 so that's the z133 and the 300 the 3,00
28:10 300 the Anie standards 3,000 so those are the two that we need to care about in tree work okay it's impressive that
28:16 you remember these oh well I know and I'm like thinking to myself I'm like am I saying them backwards but I'm pretty sure safety is the z133 so in this z133
28:25 safety thing it says things like we need to have two Climbers on site in case one
28:31 needs to rescue another one out of a tree we need to have CPR and first aid
28:36 certified people so that they can respond to an emergency we need to do a safety walkth through before we start
28:42 our job we need to have a work plan uh we need to have cones behind a chipper we don't need to leave a chipper running
28:49 when we're not there so a little kid doesn't walk in and jump in I mean these rules hearing protection eye protection
28:56 chainsaw chaps all of these are covered so I always start by telling my clients
29:02 just when you call up to request an estimate start with how often do y'all train your
29:08 employees if the company cares about the culture of their company the person answering the phone is going to be so
29:14 proud of their training program that they're going to fall over themselves telling you about it right okay so
29:20 that's just a really fun easy way to know if you have a good tree company right off the bat and and people should
29:25 care the listeners should care uh it's not about the cost if you you might think that you're paying a premium but
29:32 in our situation how we met what happened was that that tree removal
29:37 company was a Fly by Night business essentially uh they weren't bonded no insurance so guess who that liability
29:44 falls on it falls on to the homeowner so maybe you saved a couple hundred bucks but when tragedy strikes you're
29:51 ultimately going to be liable so and to mention what that poor homeowner had to deal with what you know don't even think
29:59 about what you have to see when you have something like that happen right in addition to all the trauma you know like
30:04 going back to the one that happened in aworth you know the guy like basically fried himself in a tree he had a steel
30:11 cord lanyard on that's covered you don't work around electricity with the Ste cord lanyard yeah you know it's just
30:17 senseless it's all of this is just senseless we've done a lot of content around auto insurance and uh one of the
30:25 most common things we hear from people that call our office like well I have full coverage so I'm not worried cuz I
30:31 know I have full coverage full coverage doesn't really mean anything so it's we're trying to produce this content so
30:36 that people think about all of the different types of policies that you can have and what it covers and this
30:43 conversation is sort of right in line with that being like you don't just go with who your neighbor chose without
30:50 doing your research and making sure that it's the equivalent of them saying well it's full coverage because my neighbor
30:55 used it right yeah and it's risky risky to do it how about uh a couple pruning
31:03 tips can I can I cause damage to uh I
31:09 have a Japanese maple that's not very big but uh it grows tall and we've got a
31:16 security camera at the corner of my garage that I don't want to block that view yeah would you be able to give me
31:21 tips on when I should be pruning or if I should be pruning in Japanese Maple and what I should be looking for how to
31:27 handle that kind of thing yeah this is one of the favorite things I say to people is we don't prune because of date rolls around on a calendar we prune
31:34 because the plant needs us to prune it okay okay so in your case your desire to
31:40 prune is security clearance and this happens in parking slots all the time right um we need our security we need
31:46 our security cameras so um pruning tips always prune to a point okay trees are
31:53 driven by hormones and they have hormones in the size of the branches that defend against decay the K is enemy
31:59 of trees and then they have hormones down at the tips of the branches that make them grow so when we just randomly
32:06 just cut in the middle of a branch we have disrupted all of the hormones the tree doesn't know how to grow properly
32:11 it doesn't can't defend the W properly and we just messed it that think crate murder okay if I were to Simply go and
32:18 go okay well this branch is going this way away from the camera and this branch
32:23 is going straight up to the camera and here's the the place where they meet
32:29 which branch does it make sense to remove well the one that's growing into the camera but you go back and you cut
32:34 it at the point in which it leaves the trunk or another Branch we don't ever just want to cut randomly it's called
32:41 stub cutting and it's just bad it's bad practice we also don't want to cut too far into the Flesh of the tree that's
32:47 called flesh cutting um I want to shout out to the extension agent um every
32:53 state in the United States has a land grant University and inside of of that
32:58 LR University is the extension Department here it's the University of Georgia extension department and we have
33:03 these amazing extension agents in every County and they have Publications sitting in an office and you can Google
33:09 University of Georgia Publications you can learn about native trees what are our major invasives how do we prune how
33:16 do trees grow what's wrong with my blueberry Pond they have all of this for Farmers you want Europe a a con Farmer
33:21 they have all these resources for you and it's all free um and your extension
33:26 agent is just sitting right there their desk this morning waiting on somebody to call and ask them a question about a plant they do soil tests for $8 $10 a
33:34 thing get involved with your extension agent they're here to help us with these things 90% of them are certified
33:41 Arborist um they're here to support us in our in our front yards and our backyard uh Landscapes that's amazing
33:48 and it's there's an agent for every County every County unbelievable and even Cobb County even Cobb County yeah
33:55 yep yep and we have our Georgia Forestry Commission you know they can help you with big tree issues you know there are
34:01 a lot of State you know agencies that are here to help us Georgia Forestry does a lot of firewood management U fire
34:07 management and they also deal with like all of the pine beetle outbreaks so you know they're helicoptering and they're
34:12 always watching out for our forest so big shout out and thank you so much for the Georgia Forestry commission amazing I saw when we were talking about pruning
34:18 I saw some content where you were giving tips about how to prune down to the do
34:24 you call The Joint the branch collar the branch collar uh so you do I just
34:29 outside of it you got to get just outside of it because if you cut behind it you cut through the hormones that
34:35 create the chemicals that create the ceiling over of the wound and do I
34:40 remember correctly where uh you had cut you made a cut just to get rid of the
34:45 branch and then when there was just a little bit left then you made the cut that was closest to the collar it's called the three cut method three cut
34:52 and there's again at the extension Department there's a guide called the homeowner guide to pruning and I actually used to teach I used to use it
34:59 to teach my landscapers how to prune so it's a really good publication it goes all the way from when to prune what like
35:06 versus spring versus winter blooming versus Summer blooming plants um because
35:12 like if you go out right now and you PL pruner as Ellas you just cut off all your blooms for this year so it's
35:19 important when we prune um they talk about what pruners to use when to use
35:25 the bigger ones you when to use the smaller ones um it's just a great great guide um and I mean it's so good that
35:31 that's what I used to teach with that's amazing having that the information that that guide exists I think that was worth
35:38 the price of admission alone right that's the biggest thing I've learned today no it's it's a really cool document Christy you've been an amazing
35:44 thank guest and I've loved the conversation is there anything that you feel like we didn't discuss that you
35:50 would feel remiss by not sharing with our listeners so I want to make everybody understand that there is not
35:57 lentur Tree Care in Most states there are only nine states that have lure in
36:02 Tree Care so when you're looking at these tree companies and they say they're
36:07 licensed how is that but I want to do a big shout out to uh tson boute Rusty Lee
36:15 Kevin Caldwell art Morris myself um Mandy Hall with top tier trees these
36:23 people are serving this industry um go to fasty Georgians for a safer tree
36:30 industry if you have an extra $10 please give it to them we as an industry are
36:36 fighting to have lure inside of our own industry which nobody does nobody would do that we are doing this because people
36:43 are dying and homeowners are getting bad work done and trees are being lost
36:48 because of bad things happening and if we can get just the minimum of license charge it just says that these companies
36:55 have to be insured or they have to carry this or whatever again georan for a safer tree industry jasty they've got a
37:02 website um if you need if you want to get involved if you have trees you love trees whatever and support the
37:10 companies that support the effort it is so unheard of in this day and age to see
37:16 Private Business reaching out to the state to say hey you need to come in and
37:22 regulate us yeah well not every industry is the deadliest industry year after year after year I don't know of another
37:29 person my sister's an ER nurse and she's the only other person I know that probably has to get the phone calls that I get you know I mean it's like you know
37:36 this person died this person died this person cut thems out of a tree this person did this this per you know I um
37:42 oh another fun thing we have all the local chapters have a tree climbing championship and if you haven't had the
37:48 opportunity to see tree climbing happen it's a wonderful fun thing to do and
37:54 your support uh for us matters a lot I'm the chairperson of theor Arbor Association tree climbing Championship
38:01 um and have been for eight years no I don't climb but I am passionate about climbers because they are the ones that
38:08 take care of our trees they are the ones that make all of us money in the industry they're the ones that risk it all to keep us safe we have every year
38:15 we have a tree climbing championship and we have 45 men and women that compete in
38:22 timed events um that are just incredibly fun to watch like the most fun one is a
38:28 rescue so they are on the ground and there is a 180 lb dummy in a tree and
38:34 they're giving us rescue scenario a buddy up there was trying to rescue a
38:39 cat and he reached too far and he fell and he's trapped on the branch and and he's not conscious I haven't gotten them
38:44 to talk to me and they pretend to be The Rescuer walking up and then so they have to walk through the entire scenario they
38:50 have to talk they have to ask somebody to call 911 they have to talk to 911 when they get there while they're
38:55 getting themselves in the tree to attach themselves to the real life-size dummy
39:00 that they have to get on the ground because we do have to do these rescues these are the rescues that saves lives
39:07 cheat tree industry is a production industry we are still all here to make money but we have to be safe so the tree
39:15 the climbing competitions are all timed events that get it done fast but they're all safety if you drop your sung if you
39:21 drop your safety glasses you're disqualified like it's all about safety so it's a lot of fun um if you can see
39:27 one adti get out and go because they're they're a blast we will absolutely we attend we'll sponsor do whatever we can
39:34 we'll get the word out again you are so passionate about your work and I think that you have surrounded yourself with a
39:39 lot of really great people in the industry looking at the fact that you've taken this fun competition as the
39:46 premise but in reality what's going on is it's it's its own informal certification program it's a it's a
39:52 reinforcing the safety standards and I I love you're taking care of people
39:58 I try to so it's it's right and trees and the trees take care of us yes
40:03 absolutely well that's amazing Christie thank you so much we'll make sure to get
40:08 all of your links out and you guys uh subscribe to the Channel Please
40:14 Subscribe toping Fort trees she's got great content on Tik Tok and we will see
40:19 you on the next episode take care everybody thank you