Cable and Bracing

  Some species of tree (Ash, Apple, Pear, Elm, etc.) are notorious for having weak branch attachments and without proper pruning, those branches can become too heavy for the tree to support. In the worst cases, the branch just breaks off under a heavy load of leaves, fruit, ice, snow and/or wind and is lost. However, in many cases a branch or even major stem of the tree is stressed just enough to crack or split slightly but not enough to totally compromise the stem.

When a limb has sustained damage or is just part of a weak attachment on a tree such as a codominant stem, it sometimes makes sense to use a cable or bolts to secure the stem to stabilize part of the tree for support. Often this cabling or bracing work will be accompanied by pruning to reduce excess weight on the weak or damaged limb to further reduce the stress on that damaged limb. While it may seem like an easier option to just remove the damaged limb, some limbs are too valuable or important to the tree to just remove and therefore need to be secured for safety or tree health reasons.

At Berven Forestry, we use extra high strength (EHS) galvanized steel cable which allows us to use a smaller diameter of cable to support tree limbs to each other. This in turns reduces the damage to the tree often caused by larger cables. We use a proprietary system to secure the cable to the tree, making it much less noticeable and invasive than traditional methods of securing cables in trees using bolts. If the main stem of the tree has sustained damage, we often back up the cable system with stainless steel bolts or threaded rods to provide an additional level of stability to help the tree during its healing process.

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