Fall Tree Care in Southeast Michigan: What Actually Matters Before Winter

Every autumn the garden centers say fall is the best time to plant a tree. For Michigan, Michigan State University Extension disagrees.

Bert Cregg of MSU's horticulture and forestry department has written that the idea is “built on a faulty premise, at least for this part of the country.” Soil temperature is what drives root growth, and as soil cools in the fall, new root growth essentially stops. His conclusion for the Midwest is that spring planting is the better default unless there is a compelling reason to plant in fall. He also notes that of the failed plantings he gets called out to inspect, a disproportionate share — by a factor of two or three to one — are fall jobs.

None of which means you cannot plant in October. It means fall planting has a narrower margin for error and needs more attention to watering afterward. If you have the choice, wait for spring.

For timing: in Detroit the median first 32-degree freeze lands around October 18. Note that air freeze and soil freeze are different things — the ground here usually stays workable well past the first frost, often into December.

This is the highest-value fall task and the one most often skipped.

MSU Extension's guidance is direct: before the ground freezes, water your trees and shrubs, needle-bearing conifers especially. Watering before full dormancy helps them tolerate winter conditions, particularly the winter winds that dry out evergreen foliage and turn it brown.

The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains why the damage shows up in March and looks mysterious. Winter sun and wind pull moisture out of evergreen needles, and the roots cannot replace it while the ground is frozen. The result is browning — worst on the south and southwest sides where the sun hits, and on whatever side takes the prevailing wind. Alberta and Serbian spruce, hemlock, yew and arborvitae are the usual casualties, along with broadleaf evergreens like boxwood and rhododendron.

MSU also notes that moist soil holds more heat than dry soil and resists frost penetration better. So the water is doing two jobs at once.

If you have a valuable exposed evergreen, a burlap windscreen on posts helps. Set the posts in October while the ground is still soft, add the burlap on a calm day in November or December, and take it down in early to mid-March.

MSU has been running turf research on this since Michigan's yard waste ban in the 1990s, and their position is consistently that mulch-mowing beats bagging.

The method: raise the mower deck to its highest setting and pass over the leaves once or twice, weekly — twice after a windy stretch. MSU says up to six inches of leaves can be mulched at a time depending on the mower. The visible residue lasts a few days, and by spring you will not notice it. The documented payoff is less fertilizer needed for spring green-up, plus some weed suppression. If you simply have too many, collect the mulched material every other mowing and spread three to six inches over garden or landscape beds.

There is also a reason to leave some of it alone: bumble bees, butterflies and other wild pollinators overwinter under leaf litter and woody debris. MSU suggests leaving some areas undisturbed until spring.

The exception is disease. If you have apple or crabapple with apple scab, the infected leaves on the ground are the source of next spring's spores. Rake those up and bag them — and do not home compost them.

What genuinely hurts turf is whole, un-shredded leaves matting down under wet snow. Mulched leaves do not do that.

Assuming your mulch is already the right depth and pulled back from the trunk, fall adds one specific reason to go check it again.

Voles burrow into mulch piled against a trunk and chew bark all winter under cover, girdling the tree where nobody can see it. A girdled tree does not recover. Walk the yard and push back anything touching bark before the snow arrives.

For trees you planted this year, MSU suggests an extra inch or three of mulch through the winter to slow frost penetration to the roots — kept off the trunk, and pulled back in spring when growth resumes.

Sunscald. On a bright winter day the bark on the south and southwest side of a young thin-barked tree warms enough to reactivate the cambium, then a cloud passes and the temperature crashes, killing the active tissue. A tree wrap, a plastic guard, or white latex paint prevents it. Wrap in fall and remove in spring after the last frost — left on year-round it gives trunk-boring insects a place to hide. New trees want this for at least two winters, thin-barked species for five or more.

Rabbits and voles. A rabbit can reach about eighteen inches above the snow line, and higher on its hind legs. Chicken wire stops what farm fencing does not; voles dig under ground-level barriers, so use quarter-inch hardware cloth pushed into the soil. Keep guards from rubbing the bark, and pull wraps off in mid-to-late March so water does not sit against the trunk.

Salt and ice. Road spray is mostly out of your hands, but your driveway is not — do not pile salty shoveled snow around landscape plants. And fix leaking downspouts and clean the gutters, because whatever is planted underneath takes the ice.

Once the leaves are down you can see the tree's actual architecture. MSU notes that homeowners often spot problems in fall that the foliage was hiding — crossing and rubbing branches, structural defects, deadwood.

That makes late fall a good time for an honest look at anything large enough to reach your house. Dead, broken and hazardous limbs can be removed at any time of year, so anything the inspection turns up can be dealt with immediately rather than waiting.

For your oaks specifically, fall and winter are the right window. Michigan's oak wilt high-risk period runs April 15 to July 15, and the DNR names winter as the safest time to prune oaks. Which is a good practical reason to book now rather than in March — dormant-season work fills up.

Livonia's collection rules change in early October, and the change is not obvious.

Brush under four feet long goes out as yard waste on your regular day, bundled to fifty pounds, up to five bundles a week, from late March through the second week of December.

Anything over four feet is a separate seasonal service — and it ends the first Friday of October. From the Tuesday after Memorial Day until then it is request-only, at 734-466-2655 or brush@livonia.gov.

Two things the city will not take at all. Not roots, vines, logs, trunks, stumps, shrubs or hedges. And explicitly not brush from work done by a private contractor — the program is for residential trimming you did yourself.

Bulk leaf pickup typically runs from late October into early December. Leaves only, raked into windrows at the edge of the roadway, no sticks or grass mixed in, no plastic bags. Burning is prohibited by ordinance.

Residents can haul logs, roots and stumps free to the city's wood waste site on Glendale — or a tree service takes it with them, which is the shorter version.

The short list: water the evergreens, mulch-mow the leaves, push mulch back off the trunks, wrap the young trees, and walk the property once the leaves are down.

For anything that needs a crew — hazard limbs over the house, oaks that should come down this winter, or debris the city will not take — we are here seven days a week across Southeast Michigan. Free estimates. Call (734) 788-8822.