Simplethanks Tree Care

Anyone else notice it's been a bit dry lately? 🙋‍♀️ Anyone wondering when to water their trees? Lexy has your back. Keep reading for all you need to know!

When should I water my trees? 🌳
You should water tree during drought conditions, and only if the soil is dry. Your soil is dry when you stick your finger in the dirt and it feels dry and dusty. But remember, not all droughts are created equal - cooler temps often require less watering than hotter temps.

How should I water my trees? 💧
No Sprinklers! Sprinklers are good for grass—but not for trees as they spread too little volume over too big of an area. Water in concentric rings or single spots a few feet from the trunk out and through the drip line. Remember "slow and deep". Grass takes up about 4 inches of soil, so you need to water through the grass to benefit the tree.

On Indian Hill water and having to limit non essential water usage? Be creative! You can reuse cooking water to water plants/trees. For example, after making your next Italian feast save the water you drain from your spaghetti. Wait for it to cool, then use in the garden or for your trees. ♻️

Our team is not going to miss the triple digit feels like temps! 🥵 Don't forget to hydrate and slather the sunscreen folks! 🌞

Tuesday weather planner: Triple-digit feel before relief comes overnight We'll go from a triple digit feel Tuesday to barely making it to 80 by the weekend!

🇱🇷 We love seeing our local athletes performing so well in Paris! Go Team USA! 🇱🇷

Sycamore HS alumnus Carson Foster wins bronze medal for 400m individual medley Carson Foster, a Mason native and Sycamore grad is shining bright after winning the bronze medal in the men's 400m individual medley, at the 2024 summer Olympics in Paris.

🚧Heads up for anyone going to/from downtown Thursday! 🚧

Short-term closure of Lytle Tunnel scheduled during rush hour for movie shoot Interstate 71 South will be subject to intermittent periods of closure at the Lytle Tunnel one day this week -- and it's during rush hour.

Always a good reminder! No one wants poison ivy to ruin summer fun 😎

Do you know how to identify poison ivy? 👀

As you're enjoying Ohio's natural beauty, keep your eyes peeled for poison ivy!⚠️
🔍 "Leaves of three, let it be" - the easiest way to identify poison ivy is its three leaflets per stem
🍂 Leaves are green in the spring and summer and turn red, orange, or yellow in the fall
🌱 Poison ivy can grow as ground cover, shrubs, or a climbing vine

If you come into contact, wash the affected area with soap and water ASAP and try to avoid scratching to prevent it from spreading further. Stay safe out there! 🏕️ ✨

Wondering what that orange dust on your car or sidewalk is? There's a very good chance it's Cedar-Quince Rust fungus. This fungus needs to interact with two different tree genuses (juniperus and rosaceae) to create these orange spores. If you're interested in the nitty gritty on that, check out the attached links :-)

Are we Poised for the Return of “Cheetos Dust?” Fungal rust on Callery pears is on the rise in southwest Ohio. We’ll we see a repeat of the bizarre 2020 event with orange spores covering streets, sidewalks, and cars?

Thanks Elaine! Lexy does his best to identify issues and provide solutions. When we encounter something that is outside of our wheelhouse, we make sure to give contact info of those who are experts where we are not. Because no one can know everything :-) Give us a call at 513-550-3715 if you're questioning anything about your trees and we'll help figure it out!

Who else is feeling this heat?! 🙋 Know who else might be? Your trees🌳

Drought stress conditions generally occur in our area anywhere between June and October. The best way to test to see if soil is dry is to get dirty and to stick your finger into the dirt. If it is dry and dusty, it could probably stand to get watered. The best way to water is "slow and deep". Most trees' microfine, water absorbing root hairs are in the first 8-12 inches of the soil. If you are watering near or through turf grass you need to saturate the soil through that turf grass. Generally speaking, a sprinkler is too low volume, over too much area and the turf grass will absorb most of that water from the sprinkler. Preferred methods are soaker hoses or allowing a traditional hose to slowly saturate an area. Be careful of too high of a flow on that hose though because that can contribute to erosion issues. The rule of thumb is one inch of water per week during drought conditions. Older trees are frequently more established and can easier handle drought conditions, but that isn't always the case. Some trees are more prone to drought stress than others. This includes silver maples (aka water maples). All that to say - check the dirt to make your decision :-)

This year we'll be monitoring our trees even closer than normal due to the wet spring we had. The high amount of rain earlier this year caused trees to send out an abundance of leafy, green, photosynthetic mass which the trees now have to sustain throughout the growth season, impacting their resource allocation.

Mulch rings also help maintain moisture content in the soil - just avoid your mulch ring looking like a volcano ;-)

Lastly - don't forget to hydrate yourself! Stay safe out there!

Staying uncomfortably hot with minimal rain opportunities. Heat dome attempts to intensify next few days, but clouds could have a say. They certainly have so far! Better rain chances coming late weekend and next week.

Thanks Nathan! Lexy truly enjoys helping homeowners "figure out" their trees. Whether that means pruning for optimal health and safety, leaving alone for awhile more, or removal. Give us a call at (513) 550-3715 if you'd like him to come by and make some recommendations or help solve a (tree related 😊) problem 🌳

On this National Donut Day - Elizabeth would like to recommend Golden Hands Bakery on Wooster Pike! Her four kiddos (and husband) rave about every donut they've had from them and she loves their cinnamon rolls. Also don't miss their fresh baked bread! Enjoy! 🥯

Keep an eye out for poison hemlock this summer - see below for tips on protecting yourself if you happen to find this invasive species on your property.

"My tree has some limbs with no leaves - is it okay?!"

We get this question a lot - if you've ever wondered, keep reading! As the trees in our area go through their yearly process of leafing out, it gets much easier for us to identify dead wood in their crowns. It is important to be able to distinguish between normal/healthy “self pruning deadwood” and dead wood that is a response to stress. I've had this conversation with many clients and friends, but for those I haven't (or who need a refresher) - read on!

Self Pruning
Trees photosynthesize to create carbohydrates that they use for their energy dependent systems (ie: maintaining hormonal functions, defense systems, sexual reproduction, growth and expansion, etc.). As trees grow, their lower and more interior leaves and limbs get shaded out by the new growth that grows towards the sun. Since these shaded leaves and limbs have a reduced ability to photosynthesize, often times the tree will stop sending micronutrients and water to these leaves and limbs to focus on higher carbohydrate producing leaves and limbs in the upper and outer crown. Aren’t trees such interesting and intelligent systems?! This natural process of culling nutrients and creating interior and lower crown dead wood is known as self pruning. All trees do it to some degree or another, and the amount and frequency of self pruning is dependent on species and health systems of the tree. For example, an oak is a lot more selective with its nutrients than a maple.

Dead wood from Stressors
Dead wood created by stressors to the tree is very different from self pruning and has huge implications for your trees. Stress response dead wood can happen for a number of reasons including (but not limited to) drought, mechanical wounding (damage to vascular systems such as root or trunk damage), bacterial or fungal infection, mismanagement by previous property owners, or environmental condition changes. Often times you see these responses to stress in the upper and outer crown of the tree - the furthest reaching leaves and branches - and it manifests in what we call “dieback”. This is exactly what is sounds like, small dead tips in the outer and upper parts of the tree’s crown. If the stressors are significant enough you will start to see more and more decline in the form of larger and larger dead branches in the upper and outer crown.

What does this mean for you? Knowing the difference between self pruning and stress response dead wood can reduce your own stress levels significantly! Not all dead wood in trees is indicative of bad health of the tree. Understanding this will save you time, money and the potential head ache of being fed bad information and management schemes by tree companies pushing for sales rather than proper plant health care.

Of course - no need to trust your own eyes and knowledge of trees. I'm always happy to take a look and let you know what kind of deadwood we're looking at. But hopefully this can calm the fears of a few :-)

- Lexy

Say hello to (most of) the Simple Thanks Team! (Elizabeth - who most of you have spoken to on the phone - was behind the camera. But you'll see her eventually!) Keep an eye out these next few weeks to meet everyone 👀

(Check those awesome shirts - if you've been lucky enough to receive one you know! If you happen to see someone around town sporting a Find Your Forest shirt - we highly recommend saying hello. Our community and clients are top notch and just overall good people. Good chance you'll make a new friend!)

For those staying in town - don't forget the Taste of Cincinnati returns this holiday weekend!

Taste of Cincinnati returns this weekend! Everything to know before chowing down Taste of Cincinnati returns to downtown Cincinnati for Memorial Day weekend, May 25-27. Here's everything you need to know before you go.

If you've called us about pruning your oak trees, you've probably had Lexy tell you a bit about oak wilt. For those who haven't... here's a quick explanation of what this is and why you should pay attention to it!

Oak wilt likely started appearing in our area as early as 2021, but more cases have been identified in the past two years. As a result, responsible arborists have shifted their practices around when oak pruning is completed. Oak wilt is a fungal pathogen that when introduced to oaks can cause extremely rapid decline and death; in some cases it can take only a few weeks for the tree to fully die. Red oaks are more susceptible and have more severe reactions than white oaks. An easy way to distinguish between red oak and white oak varieties is by looking at the leaf lobes. If the lobes of a leaf are pointy they are red oaks; if the lobes of the leaf are rounded they are white oaks.

What are the most important things you can do as a homeowner?

1. We recommend pruning live material from oaks during dormancy. This dormant window is generally between December and early March, depending on how our local weather systems ebb and flow. We are paying attention to how much sap is flowing in the tree, as well as how active the local bug population is. The lower these are the better, so that is why we aim for much colder weather to prune oaks.

2. Just because your oak has dead wood in the crown, does not mean that it has oak wilt. There are a number of different reasons why trees can have dead wood in their crowns ranging from normal self pruning, to symptoms of stress such as drought stress, environmental change stress, old age, mechanical issues of water and nutrient transport, etc. What we are looking for to help us identify oak wilt is a very specific type of decline which is unseasonable decline to leaf mass. For example, in the middle of spring, if you see a large limb or lead in the upper crown start to go brown and die, this would be an anomalous shift in the trees health system which could indicate oak wilt presence. Ultimately the only way for an oak to be properly diagnosed with oak wilt is through a lab test, but looking for these types of anomalous stress responses will greatly reduce the potential of oak wilt spread in our local area.

3. Tell your friends about oak wilt! One of the best ways to avoid oak wilt from becoming a massive problem for the Ohio River Valley - if oak wilt starts to take off in our area it will GREATLY affect our local landscapes and ecosystems - is to tell your friends and neighbors about it. There isn’t a lot of information or “buzz” about oak wilt because it hasn’t become a wide spread issue - yet. Hopefully it stays that way. We don’t need to be experts on oak wilt to inform others about it.

If you want some "light" reading on the topic, check out OSU's site linked here:

Oak Wilt Oak wilt is a serious and often deadly vascular disease of oaks. The fungal pathogen, Bretziella fagacearum (formerly Ceratocystis fagacearum), is known to occur in North America, but its origin is currently unknown. The pathogen is distributed throughout the Midwest and Texas. Over the years, and w...

The kind words never get old! Here is what a recent client had to say about the work our team did:

"I want to mention that the oak tree after trimming by Lexy and crew is beautiful. Removing the limbs near the roof is a huge improvement and since the roof needs replacing will make the DIY job much easier. The whole tree is stunning! Anytime I hear someone say a tree needs attention, I always mention Simplethanks Tree Care and give a heartfelt recommendation."

Message or call/text 513-550-3715 if you need Lexy to swing by for a free consultation 🌳

For anyone driving through Madeira today or next week! Our favorite detour from Euclid is to turn left on Hosbrook, then right on Shewango. That'll take you right to Miami. Excited for the final product of all this construction!

We love being able to help with complicated projects! Whether complicated by multiple invested parties or by the scope of the job, bringing relief to our clients through tree care is (maybe strangely) satisfying. Call or text 513-550-3715 to have Lexy come for a free consultation for your big (or small!) project and we'll see what we can do!

🌳With most of our local species going through leaf emergence and leaf expansion, now is a great time to have your tree's health and structure assessed by an arborist. Contact us today for your free consultation to learn more about the trees on your property and what you can do to keep them maintained. 🌲

Come see Lexy at Madeira's first Arbor Day Celebration! Ask an Arborist all your burning questions about tree care and enjoy fun for the whole family! 🌳 This Sunday, May 1 from 12-4 on Miami Ave.

Looking for: Skilled, energetic, hardworking, responsible, team-minded Climbing Arborist

Love tree climbing,
great team work environment,
a skilled and caring boss,
paid training and opportunity to grow?
Simplethanks Tree Care needs you!

What we’ll do for you:
Good pay and job benefits including holiday and vacation pay, sick days, Simple IRA plan with company matching contributions, health insurance re-imbursement
Provide high quality equipment and gear
Provide on the clock climbing, tree care training and education and free gym membership and strength training programs
Give you feedback on your climbing skills and plant health care knowledge
Provide a stable, drama-free work environment
Have a skilled, understanding and caring boss,
Quarterly dialogue-based reviews
Create pride in doing high quality work and creating customer satisfaction

What you’ll do for us:
Show up on time, ready for a full day’s work,
Do all tree work with thought, care and pride,
Climb in a safe, efficient manner at all times,
Work cheerfully with all team members,
Organize and care for gear and equipment,
Always be respectful of customers,
Be willing to constantly improve climbing and tree care skills.