KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Thanks for joining us on the program, and welcome home Dean Sharp the House Whisper. Here with you as I am every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time. We have had the first two hours of the show, so informative.
If you've missed any part of the show, let me remind you that this very program, this broadcast, this live broadcast right now is also what's known as The House Whisper Podcast that you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand, as often as you like, as many times as you like. Hundreds of episodes, all searchable by topic. It is truly a home improvement reference library that we have built for you.
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All you have to understand is that about an hour after we go off the air of the live broadcast, boom, all of this is podcast. And so if you've missed any part of the show. The first hour of the show, we were talking about birds. The second part of the show, the middle hour, we were talking about bees. Because this is our springtime, bring more nature back into your yard. And now one of my favorite topics of all trees. You hear me as a home designer and as a
landscape designer, you hear me talking about trees. The fact that I mean, I love I love all plants. I love them all native plants, shrubs, flowers, the entire, the
entire spectrum. But I tell you what, if you really want to change the environment of your yard, if you want to change the temperature in your yard, if you want to change the wildlife in your yard, then and if you want to By the way, one of the biggest rois all right, so you know some of you are listening here, like, all right, Dean's on his little
nature boy environmental kick today. All right, let's just talk about pure ROI the National Association of Realtors have studied this again and again and again, and they have yet to change their mind on this. You know, as an estate designer, there are times when a client will literally say, I just want a fully mature tree in the front of this empty lot. When we're done here, Dean, I've
got no problem. I got sources for that. I can bring in a tree that's got a seventy two inch box, yeah, six foot box by six foot or an eight foot box, will plant it tomorrow, and you'll have a fully mature tree sitting in your front yard. Yeah, that's going to run you twenty thirty thousand dollars, depending on the species of tree and the size of the tree, and the crane service that we have to hire to bring it in.
But I will tell you this, a fully mature tree added to the front of a an existing property, according to the National Association of Realtor, will raise the property value, the property value of that house by anywhere from five to ten percent. Now think about that. Let's say you're sitting on a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars home and we invest twenty thousand dollars and put a mature tree in your front yard. It just cost you twenty
thousand dollars. I'm not saying everybody should do. I'm just saying we're just doing math. Okay, twenty thousand dollars Today, we plant a tree, a mature tree in your front yard. Guess what your home is worth by the time we are done planting that tree. That's seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars home, Okay, is now seventy five thousand dollars. Greater value twenty thousand dollars tree seventy five thousand dollars ROI on that. Okay, this is real. It's a real thing.
But I'm not I'm not here to talk to you about the the ROI on your property. Okay, the money stuff, we can talk about that later. What I am here to talk about is what to do with trees springtime versus what we do at other times of year, what we should and shouldn't be doing. And to accomplish this feat, I now have sitting across the table, my third guest this morning.
Phew, a lot of guests.
Bob Lothed, certified arborist and my favorite arborist and tree trimmer and good friend, is sitting across the table from me.
Bob. Welcome, thank you, the show, Thank you. It's good to be here.
And I've had Bob on before, but he comes every every autumn and every spring for our for our autumn and spring backyard show. So all right, we're up against a break. I've set it all up for you. We're gonna talk trees, and Bob is going to give us his expertise and his experience. He's also had an experience with a Beastwarm not too long ago. So we're gonna dovetail in what Nicole was talking about and get Bob's experience of that whole thing. All of it happens.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
You have dropped in, I hope pleasantly surprised to a great little show that we're putting on for you this morning. And I say that not because of me, but because of the guests that I've had sitting across the table from me this morning, everybody from Richard Armording from wild Birds Unlimited, to Nicole Palladino from Bee Catchers, and now sitting across the table from me, certified Arborus Bob Loft, who is my local tree expert. And so we've talked
about birds, We've talked about bees. Now I want to talk about that other critical component of habitat, trees and other shows we'll do other landscaping shows where we focus more on native plants and flowers and all of that. So just know that we cover the whole spectrum here on the show. But Bob Trees, my friend trees. How's that ash tree looking in my yard? By the way, your ash trees looking absolutely great. Could use a little work next year. Fin it out a little bit next
year in the fall, in the fall fall. Okay, So speaking of that, speaking of that, speaking of in the fall, you know, I mean California, Southern California. We're we you know, we we live here because the weather here is just i mean, compared to other places, it is not extreme. Now, yeah, we have our we've got our sant Ana wins, and we've got our our one hundred plus degree days and and all of that, and we've got our fire season
and all of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is California remains a very very temperate place to live, which means that when it comes to like tree trimming and that, I mean, there's never really an awful season to trim, per se just just because you know. But but still trees are trying to They're they're pushing through their beginning of their growth cycle right now in the spring, and it's you know, we talked about autumn. Autumn is really the optimal time if you're going to do a age.
You're trimming of a tree as opposed to shocking something that's trying to grow right now.
That's right.
Fall is always the most fun time because you can take a lot more off a tree and not feel like you're you know, making it scream. And so you just don't want these guys that are coming there and turn a forty foot tree into a twenty foot tree.
Yeah, and the.
Customer goes, well, they said it'll grow back, So you got to be a little more selective on your pruning cuts and you know, obviously shaping the tree up for the environment that they're in.
So that's fun. Yeah.
But as far as mature trees right now in the spring, believe it or not, a lot of these trees are already self fertilized. I mean, they don't need a lot of fertilizing. You probably need a lot more fertilizing on some of the garden trees more than anything. Maybe some evergreen pears, fruit trees especially, This is a great time to put the fur I like job tree steaks, So I'm just a big joe job tree steak guy.
So it's a good time to inject nutrition into brooding trees that time right now, What do you mean by a big mature tree is self fertilized?
What just seems like.
The roots have reached that level of of what not.
I don't want to use water.
It just seemed to grab what they need out of the soil around here, and you don't really have to do a lot of fertilization on big trees.
Okay, that's how I was baiting you into that that answer, because because because that's one of the things that I promote with people about trees so often, right, is that once a mature, once a tree gets mature, right, and its roots are deep. I mean, you know, all of human history, we make metaphors out of mature trees, right.
We talk about you know, being planted like a tree, uh, being being you know stable like all but the but the there's a reason for that because once trees are like up and running on their own, they don't need to get watered the like everything else in the yard. They don't need to be you know, fertilized like everything else in the yard, because they have found their sources. They've found their place.
I will never understand how some trees get water, but they sure do and they look great. And so if to me, if a tree looks good like a lot of things, if.
It ain't broke.
Don't fix it, amen, But if you start to see some things, you might have to call in a professional who might be able to inject some nutrients into the ground. But you know, kind of rare, kind of rare, and out here in thousand oaks, it just seems like the perfect environment for all of our stuff, for all of life.
That's why we're here, that's right, all right.
So so and I always give this metaphor to people, or this an analogy metaphor and some okay, whatever it is, this word picture to people when you talked about fall, doing a major prune on a tree in the fall, so it doesn't scream as much. I just tell people, listen, okay, trees they start getting sleepy in the fall. They go in their dormant cycle, right, And so it's just like
somebody going in for major surgery. You know, it'd be better if we cut them open and did all this major surgery while they were asleep.
That's right.
It'd be better to do it while they're asleep instead of just handing them like that tree branch here, Bite down on this, buddy, we're about to take your leg off. Sorry, we don't have any anesthesia. So the point is this, trees naturally go into this dormant cycle in the fall, and it's just safer too for the life of the tree. If you're going to do a major cutback, to do it then as opposed in springtime when they're literally waking up.
That's the last thing I want is I'm waking up in the morning, is for a doctor to say, all right, buddy, hang on because I'm about to cut into you. So but there are things that we can do during spring and are what are the kinds of things that people should be looking for for their tree, Like when you were saying when you were saying, if you know, if
it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if tree looks fine, what are the kinds of things that people could be looking out for that and to realize, man, that's not such a good sign.
Well, if you see sections of the tree that might get a lot of die back and you're not sure what's going on, it's a good time to call somebody out. Could be just a broken limb, you know. But there's there's not a lot of pruning that you can do to make a tree healthier. You can maybe save some of the tree, but pruning it now is not a big deal. But in the falls a good time. They're gotten heavy, the winds come up, they start breaking limbs.
Always something to think about. So you don't can lighten these limbs up, tipping back somethin out the tree, get the get the sale off of them. For me. Right now, a lot of it is fruit trees. This is a very interesting year. We haven't had a seventy degree day. I don't think since Christmas. It seems that way.
Sure s, I mean, I think we've had a couple of But it's your it's sure. But we've been talking about this all morning. You weren't here, but we've been talking about the fact that this is like a legitimate like eastern spring, where there's there's a little bit of warmth in the morning, and then it gets cloudy and then it rains for two hours and then and then it stays cloudy, and then then the temperature drops twenty degrees. This is a this is a very slow roll of spring.
It is very slow rollout. I think right now, fruit trees are probably a big thing. Fertilize your fruit trees, your citrus, your stone fruits, the stone fruits.
Everything is slow. But if you look, you see new blossoms coming up. But maybe a month ago they would have been there. But because we're cold, everything's been set back a little bit. But I have noticed a lot of the stone fruit putting out a lot of nice fruit.
And you could go through there and fin out on fruits.
So if you have, you know, three pieces of fruit on one branch really close to each other, take one or two of them off so the other the other fruit, can you know, expand and become bigger fruit.
Okay, So I want to talk about that, so that there logic to be looking for about thinning out, especially with a fruit tree, in order to increase its productivity or the size of the fruit or whatever. All Right, we're gonna go to break. When we come back, you're gonna explain that to me a little bit better so
I understand it better. I am sitting here with certified arborius Bob Loft, who is my personal tree expert, and now yours, and we will continue to talk about the life of your trees in this interesting springtime.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I wish you guys could just be sitting in studio with me as Bob and I are just talking about all things and all sorts of stuff. I am sitting here with my certified arbor Bob Loft, who is my personal tree expert. We've talked today about birds, We've talked about bees. Now we're talking about trees. Because I am on a mission. I'm on a mission as a home designer, Okay, as a landscape designer. I'm on a mission to bring as much nature back into our yards, back onto our
properties as possible. And I said this earlier in the show, but for those of you who have just joined us, I'm going to say it again. Anything, any creature on this planet that builds a home displaces something that was there before. Right when a gopher burrows a hole up in the middle of a meadow, roots are displaced, plants are removed, things that were there before get moved out of the way. It is not something for human beings,
in my opinion, to feel guilty about that. We build a structure, a build a home where there was a prairie once before, or where there was an open field of wildflowers once before. That is not the issue. We're all entitled to our homes. But but, but, but but what we don't do as well these days as the other creatures around us is integrate our homes back into the natural order so that nature stays with us and stays around us. You know, once we built a home,
then we pave a street. Once we pave a street, then we plow under everything in our backyard. I've literally had clients and folks come to me over the years, and you can relate to this. I've literally had folks who have spent multiple millions of dollars on a home away from the center of town, right on the edge of open space, right so their home as a view and they're out right on the edge of open space, wildland, and then come to me and say, how do I
keep all these creatures out of my yard? How do I keep you know, how do we kill the coyotes? How do I keep this from happening in that? And I just look at them and I say, how dare you? How dare you pay extra money to live on the edge of nature and then complain about nature being right outside your door. So my point is this, I don't care where you live. I don't care how far in the inland you live or in the middle of town
that you live. When it comes to your home and your yard, trees are one of those keystone elements of bringing the opportunity for nature because trees, as we said earlier, Bob, they dig deep, they find their own sources of water. Trees through a process it's called transpiration. Trees don't perspire, they transpire. They they the moisture that they find in the soil they release out into the air around them. They cool the air around them, not just from shade,
but also from the release of moisture. They become a source of shelter and cover for all sorts of animals. They become the nesting place of birds. And so the more trees that we bring into our homes and the more beautiful architectural structures they are when they're prune properly. Which is one of the things that I love about what you do, Bob, because you have a way of approaching as an arborist, approaching trees not to mutilate them,
but to enhance their structure, their beauty. And before the break, we were talking about fruit trees right now, and you were saying that if we thin out, and I want you to explain that to if we find like, let's say, you know, because I've got some citrus right there, let's say I've got three fruits all growing right next to each other. You're saying, I can thin that out so to give a little bit more space so things get bigger.
Explain that.
You know, it's kind of funny that you would have to go and mention citrus because probably schitrs are one of the stronger produce so you might get they don't seem to grow in such a clump like our stone fruits.
Okay, So stone fruits is what you were talking about.
Yeah, and the citrus, you know, they'll push one off, but the stone fruits they all grow together.
And then now somebody out there is sitting there going, what the heck? What the heck? Is a stone fruit?
Okay, plumb peach, anything that has a pit in the middle, it's a fruit. It's all soft on the outside, it's got a pit in the set. That's that's the stone there. Get the stone fruit, okay, okay, okay.
So you take if you have three of them really tight, take two of them off, and it's a lot of work but at the end of the day, instead of having three of them grow and fall off together, you can develop one nice big plum which you would just love with, you know, plum something plump something, plum something, you know, nice cold plum, all the same peach. I guess the biggest problem that you have, or the complaint, is how do I keep?
And I don't have a good answer for this. How do I keep?
If you asked the question right, how do I keep all the critters from eating my fruit? The squirrels beat me to it. Well, you can get you can get netting and put them over the fruit if you have the wherewithal.
Now the tree is big enough that the fruit's high enough off the ground that the squirrel can't make the jump. The squirrels are damn clever. Well, if they just climb up that trunk. Yeah, but what if I put one of those Okay, so let me get your opinion about this, Because what if I put like a metal collar around the trunk, in other words, that eighteen in section, so that as they climb up they just can't get any traction on that.
Yeah, most fruit trees, ninety fruit trees don't grow like that because we want to keep them low so we can reach the fruit exactly.
And so if you have one.
Branch that's hanging down below the sheet metal cover that you have there, and he grabs that and off he goes.
Or the birds, all the birds will come in.
You know. I've had people go, oh, man, I came out and there's like seventeen birds in there, and look what they did to my fruit.
I don't know how you stop that.
You could use the nylon, but then they get stuck in the nylon, and then people are going.
Like, oh no, so I don't know. Hang possibly.
I've had actually people tell me that if you can hang the real loose aluminum foil.
The little ribbons, the reflective ribbons, that seems to help. Yeah, they don't. Most birds are annoyed by that. They're not sure what that's all about. It's too much motion. They're just skittish of motion.
In general. There's not just is.
Not really in any good way to protect the fruit unless you have a nice, big yard, and believe it or not, everything's grown away from everything. Then it's just sometimes the squirrels just don't go that extra ten feet or fifteen feet to go up the tree. To go to the other one. There's no good at least I have no good idea. You know, there might be some what would you call that?
Yeah, but I so appreciate you saying this, okay, because you know, people come to the show for answers, right, but sometimes the answers that I have to give people are not the clean, tight, tidy answers that they expect. What you're talking about is realistic, and that's something that Tina and I have experienced here.
All right.
We wanted to have a vegetable guard. We had a vegetable garden for quite a few years, and simultaneously I've got it. I'm growing you know, raised bed vegetables while I am encouraging every bird I know to come into my yard. Well guess what. Guess what happens? Right, They're like, well, thank you very much, Teane, thank you very much. So it is just a reality that you have to work if you want nature in your yard, you're gonna work
with the messiness that is that process. And you know the idea of like, okay, well all that's important to me is growing fruit for myself. Then then you're probably going to discourage birds from coming into your yard in general, just because you don't want them there.
You're right, But if you're mixing it all up, then you're mixing it up.
And and of course I know we're not really talking about that, but raised beds with a nice little cover over it. I've seen some awesome gardens, So you can do some things to protect your garden beds. But trees, there's really no he can't put a glass dome over it, you know, And.
That would be an idea. And wait a second, let me think about that.
It's a new business opportunity. But but I just and then you go to people's yards that are like yours here and they got fruit everywhere, you know, every one of their trees.
Give them more, they don't know what to do with it.
Well, I just gave seven pounds of peaches to my neighbor, and you're going, really, I got guys that take care of their trees and they can't get a pound off of them. So you know, it's all such a just like the climate in the Canalo Valley. It can change from ghost Biento's to Calabasas, just like that.
Radical chance.
Yeah, microclimates everywhere, they're a microcs, all right, all right, we're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna come back. And we've got just a few minutes. So you had mentioned something. I think we were talking about it during the break that with this slow roll of spring that we're experiencing this year, people get a little worried that the tree isn't coming in, that it hasn't greened in yet. And you've got some advice for them. Don't give it
to them now. We're gonna make everybody wait. Everybody, you hang tight. I've got more with Bob Loth, certified arborist. When we return your Home with Dean Sharp the house whisper.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI Am six forty.
We're not done yet. We are not done yet. And I apologize. We've had so much to talk about with my guests this morning. I have not had a chance to get to the phones. Everybody who is on the phone lines right now. If you give us a call next weekend, if you call, if you've got time to call, you let our call screen or know you, let our producer know. Hey, I was on the phone and I didn't get to get on the air and we will give you a fast pass to the front of the line,
right because we treat everybody right around here. We honor and we love our callers, love, I love, love our college. We just had so much to talk about today, so you remember that. And my apologies for not getting two calls today. I'm sitting here. We've just got a few
minutes left. Bob with Bob Loft, certified arborist. And two things. One, let's talk about what I had said before the break, which is spring is sort of slow rolling it this year, and some people are concerned that, oh, my tree isn't greening in the way I thought. And your message to them is patients, patients.
Just so I go out there and I go, no, look and I pull a branch down and they go, oh, there's green everywhere, but it just hasn't popped enough. And I just believe it's because we haven't been warm enough yet, you know, but it will in another month.
Everything. We're like a month behind I think where we normally are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So just patience, that's rights.
I just thinking that all my years of you know, experience and work, I don't see trees just going and die unless something happened to the roots, or they may have gotten a fungus. But so, but in general, this time of year, a lot you have to do, you know, maybe trim.
It up so it's not hitting you in the face.
You know.
There you go.
So your message in general, your whole demeanor as a person is just hey, chill out. Just everybody relax, that's right, take it easy.
Now. I'm not saying that I don't do a lot of pruning for people, because you do, you do well. People are people and they want stuff done. Now, I won't wreck a tree, but I might fin a tree out a little more than would be the best, but that's what the customer would like, and we talk about it and it's fine and it's going to be fine. But rather to almost see you do less is better, okay, yes, yes, all right.
So on that note, here's the last thing that I want to talk to you about today, because I got to get this off my chest, because this is my little soapbox, because this just drives me crazy. When you know, we lived in a condo complex at the beginning of our marriage, and beautiful magnolia trees all through the complex, right, and then one year the HLA decides, Oh, we got it, we got it, We're gonna be We got the notice. Trees are getting trimmed. All right, fine, great, great, these
trees could use some some pruning back. They could use some trimming back. Got home. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's the kind of thing you see everywhere trimming, trimming that's not a trim that is all they left where. I mean, they literally took everything off except maybe six inch diameter branches and larger. I'm like, and now, what happens every year? It's the same thing. Right go through fall, that tree just is sitting there with just these nubs, and then spring hits and all I see coming out
of those nubs are sprites, big green sprites. Now eventually by summer there is a fullness to the tree, which I mean, thank god they can kill the tree, but the fullness to that tree is just sprites. And those aren't actual real natural branches. They're they're a different kind of growth, and uh, and it's not attractive.
The sad part of that is that's just the kind of pruning you do to get work done. Associations unfortunately, and some homeowners all they want to do is make the tree smallers, they don't really care because the common word is don't worry, it'll grow back.
And they do. That's the technically they do.
And and I don't think I've seen many trees die because of that kind of work, but I do not.
Don't do that.
You know, well, I mean it's not attractive. First of all, it's not. There's nothing attractive. You've destroyed that that that beautiful, that that beautiful structure of the branches to begin with. So I asked you during the break, and I want you to tell everybody when it comes that just because this is a useful guy, because you know, I said that they cut everything back except these big six inch I mean six inch diameter branches. Where the minimum for them.
When you're pruning and you get to prune the way you want to prune, let's just assume the whole tree is healthy. That you're not you're not actually because you know, I mean, if there's a big old branch that's about to collapse and that you want to so you cut off something big. But assuming everything is healthy on most trees, you know, what's like the maximum diameter branch that you that you feel comfortable taking off.
I think you can get away with an inch inch and a half. See, that is so much smaller than what these are. Yeah, right, And the old tree ordans will tell you can't trim anything larger than two right, but you can do a lot of thinning by what they call drop crotching.
So you could see it. That doesn't sound right, that doesn't sound.
Right you, But you could have a really heavy part of a tree and you could take one six inch slim out of that tree, right, and it looks beautiful.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so that's what they would call drop crotching, not topping. Topping would be you come home and they cut seventeen six inch.
Slims exactly, and all that's left is there's these big bony stubs.
Right, and then they turn into big old bushes in the following year.
Shrubs, not trees. Yeah, kind of like lowre flight shrubs. So again, when you're pruning a tree, as a general rule, you are preferring not to take off anything more than you say you could get away with an inch maybe an inch and a half. Yeah, pretty much, all right, I want everybody to hear that.
Okay.
The certified arbiast who loves sculpting trees, does not want to take off unless it's an unhealthy branch or something that's about to collapse or something that's diseased. Does not want to take off. Anything bigger than an inch and a half in diameter, that's just that big.
Just think that most trees don't need heavy pruning except the homeowner gets nervous, and they don't have to be depending on the type of tree. But if you don't ask the right person, then your tree is a problem. If you ask the right person, then that person can lead you to pruning it properly.
That's all.
So this is why, this is why from the get go, it's one thing to call a landscaping service or tree pruning service. But I always recommend to people if you don't know, and if you have any questions or whatsoever, then then you need to call somebody who is in fact a certified arborist, a tree expert, not just some guy with a chainsaw.
But everybody who trims a tree is an arborist. I'm just saying that. Well, he said he was an arborist. I says, yeah, that's because he trimmed trees. But he just got your magnolia tree in half. Why did he do that?
Right?
They don't have to do that to ninety percent of the trees. I'm out, get the wind blowing and you're gonna be okay. Placement placement, placement, placement. You got some wonderful big sycamore trees around here, and they're placed per there. Oh my gosh, y'all, thank you. I don't think you'll ever have to do much with them unless you find something a deadlamb or something that's.
Well, that was the goal. That was the goal.
The goal was not, you know, to put them in the right place they're not threatening in the house, to put them in the right place so that they're not pushing into each other. No, really nice placement, all right. So here's the gy once again. This is a continual theme here on the program, and that is when you're looking to do something right, find the right person, find somebody who is passionate, not about cutting things, passionate about
the thing itself right. And that's what I love about you, Bob. You love trees, and so you're never going to make a suggestion to me about well, you know what, I'm a little shy of work this week, so i'd like to I'd like to completely, you know, murder and mutilate that.
I give you a deal.
And that's the thing. It actually does cost a little more. It's more labor intensive to go through a tree and to prune it properly, selectively, kindly than to just just again press the nuclear button and say, okay, it's all gone. Bob, thanks so much for being here again. It is always a pleasure. We have so much fun, and I wish the listeners could hear half of what we're talking about during the break. Anyway, all right, y'all, here we are.
It's at the end of another three hours. I hope you are this much closer to understanding the role of birds in your yard, how to bring them in the role of bees, How when you see a swarm crossover your yard. I know we didn't get to ask Bob Bob experience that swarm and nothing happened to him, that you're witnessing a birth, and that you just let it be because they're so important to what's happening and your trees.
Don't overdo it. Call somebody with passion and use all of these things, the birds, the bees, the trees to literally get out there and build yourself a beautiful life. All right, We will see you all here next weekend. This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app