Spring clean up

Jill O'Donnell, Christmas Tree ICM educator -

Editor’s note: This article is from the archives of the MSU Crop Advisory Team Alerts. Check the label of any pesticide referenced to ensure your use is included

Now is a great time to walk through your fields and do a little spring “clean up” that you may not have gotten to last fall.
Some of the things to look for and correct or remove are:

  • Competing leaders.
  • Horns in Fraser fir.
  • Create new leaders on trees that have lost their leaders by tying up a lateral branch to create a new leader.
  • Stake crooked leaders.
  • Eliminating branches that are growing into the tree (shooters)

competing leaders
Competing leaders.


Horns in Fraser fir.

Horns removed
After some of the horns
are removed from a
Fraser fir.

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