Tree work built for Apollo Beach

Canal lots and the trees that lean over them

Most of Apollo Beach sits on dredged finger canals. The lot backs onto a seawall with a dock on it, and usually a boat tied up. That changes tree work before anybody pulls a saw. There's often no rear access at all, the neighbor is close on both sides, and every piece that comes down has to travel out through a side gate or over the water. So we walk that route first. It decides how the tree gets taken apart, and it decides the price.

The ground here is fill over old bay bottom. Sandy on top, with water sitting not far under it. Roots spread wide and shallow instead of going down, so a tree that looks solid can have a root plate the size of a patio and nothing much anchoring it. Then you add wind off open water on the west side. That's how a healthy looking tree ends up laid across a seawall cap. Watch for a lean, or for soil lifting on one side of the trunk. Either one is worth a call.

Salt gets into everything on a canal lot. It burns the tips on anything that isn't built for it, and it's why what we plant near a seawall runs to cabbage palm and sea grape instead of whatever looked good at the garden center. Mangrove down at the water line is its own conversation. It's protected, and we'll tell you that at the estimate instead of after. Jacob quotes what the job actually takes, in writing, and the number doesn't move once the crew shows up.

• Side gate and seawall access walked before we quote
• Limbs rigged down over pool cages, never dropped
• Palms cleaned without cutting into the green
• Stumps ground out below grade
• Debris hauled off, driveway and dock blown clean

Palms over a pool cage, oaks over a roof

The mix here is mostly palm and oak, with pine scattered through the older streets. Queen palms and Washingtonia palms drop heavy seed pods and dead fronds onto cages and driveways. Live oaks reach long limbs out over a roof line and hold them there for years, until one gets heavy enough to matter. Norfolk pines are the ones people planted for the look, and they're usually first over in a hard blow. Every one of those wants a different cut. That's the part you're really paying for.

Palms get ruined more often than weather hurts them. Somebody cuts everything back to a pencil point because it looks tidy and it won't need doing again for a while. The palm loses the fronds it feeds on. It comes back weaker, the trunk narrows right at that height, and the next storm snaps it where the cut was. We pull the dead fronds and the seed pods off, and we leave the green that's still working. Costs a bit more time. Your palm's still there after the next blow.

On the oaks it's weight and clearance. A limb running out over a roof wants the end weight taken off and the deadwood cleared out of it. Strip the whole canopy instead and the tree throws a mess of weak shoots straight back at you. Where a big oak splits into two leaders at a bad angle, we can sometimes hold it together with a cable and brace rather than take the whole thing out. Insurance people around the bay are looking hard at limbs over roofs right now. Worth getting ahead of.

What is left after the tree comes down

Getting the tree down is half the job. A stump left in a canal lot yard rots where it sits and throws suckers up around itself, and it blocks the one flat piece of ground you wanted back. Grinding is what people ask us about most. We take it out below grade so the spot can hold soil and sod again. The grindings either go back in the hole or onto the truck, whichever you want.

Roots are the other half. On these lots the big surface roots run for the wet ground, so they end up under a driveway or lifting a paver patio until it starts sinking and heaving. Jacob does that repair too. Pavers come up, the base gets fixed, then they go back down and get tamped level with a fresh coat of sand. If a root has run under your seawall cap, say so when you call. It changes what we can safely do with the tree standing over it.

Then the yard has to look like nobody was ever there. Chips get blown off the pavers and the dock, and the drive gets cleared. The bare patch where the tree stood can take fresh sod on the same visit if you want it. Plenty of people put something back in its place. On a canal lot that means picking for salt and wind instead of for the picture on the tag. Cabbage palm and sea grape hold up close to the water, and a live oak wants to sit well back from it.

Getting a price in Apollo Beach

Call (941) 580-4949, or send the form with your cross street and a photo if you've got one. Somebody comes out and looks at the tree before anybody talks money. You get a written estimate with the work spelled out, what comes down and what leaves on the truck, and it holds. Jacob works his own jobs, so the person walking your yard is the one doing the cutting. Monday through Saturday, with a shorter window on Sunday.