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PLANT HEALTH CARE
Many tree care services offer plant health care treatments to their clients, but what is plant health care? By definition, plant health care could be any type of treatment, or action, which improves or maintains the health of a plant. Plant health care could be pruning a tree, controlling insect or disease pests on a tree, fertilizing a tree, or any other treatment that will help a tree.
In the tree care industry, however, plant health care is usually considered to be some type of insect or disease control treatment or some type of soil enhancement such as fertilizing a tree, altering the soil pH, or adding other beneficial components to the soil.
The goal of plant health care is to improve, or maintain, the health of trees so they can continue to be an asset and add beauty to our landscapes. This is achieved by controlling insect and disease pests and by making sure the trees have adequate nutrients available for healthy growth to occur.
Tree care services achieve this goal by scheduling plant health care treatments based on the tree species located on the property they are maintaining. Plant health care treatments may need to be applied preventively or after the presence of a tree pest, depending on the pest and tree species involved. Local arborists know which trees need to be protected from common tree diseases and the types of insects common to a given area.
In most cases a plant health care program involves periodic visits to a property to adequately protect the landscape trees and shrubs. Not all insect or disease pests are active at the same time of the year, so multiple plant health care treatments are used to target different tree or insect pests.
Unfortunately, many landscape plants are planted in unnatural environments. This puts landscape plants under stress, which not only encourages insect and disease infestation, but makes the damage caused by insect or disease pests more damaging to the plant. The benefit of a plant health care program is that most of this damage can be prevented.
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