Straight answers for Pinellas Park yards

Old laurel oaks over block ranches

Most of Pinellas Park went up in one long stretch. Block houses, one story, flat platted lots, and the shade trees planted as the streets were finished. So whole blocks of laurel oak and slash pine are hitting old age at the same time. Laurel oak is the one that catches people out. It grows fast and shades a yard early. Then it hollows from the middle while the outside still looks green, and a tree can carry a full head of leaves over your roof with most of the trunk gone.

You can usually spot it from the driveway if you know the signs. Bark that sounds hollow when you knock it. A seam running down the trunk where two leaders press on each other. Mushrooms at the base after a wet week. Dead limbs hung up in the crown. None of that means the tree comes down today. It does mean somebody ought to get up in it and look, because the limb that ends up on a roof in this town was usually dead for a season first.

Then there's the lot itself. Side yards here run tight, the neighbor's screen enclosure sits close, and power drops cross back yards and alleys all over Pinellas Park. Nothing gets felled whole. It comes down in pieces on a rope, with the drop zone worked out before a saw starts. Jacob owns his equipment and works the job himself, which is why the number stays where it does. Or as the listing puts it, I don't cut corners, I cut trees.

• Deadwood pulled out of oaks above the roofline
• Sabal and queen palms cleaned of dead fronds
• Limbs lowered on a rope where side yards are tight
• Stumps ground below grade, hole filled back
• Brush hauled off and the driveway blown clean

What the water table does to roots

Pinellas Park sits low and flat on sand, and the water table is closer to the surface than people expect. Roots follow the water, so they run wide and shallow instead of heading down. What you get is a big tree standing on a root plate that's broad but thin, spread under the lawn like a dinner plate under a bowling ball. Dry weather, it holds fine. Soak that sand for three days first, which is what a stalled summer system over the bay does, and the grip gets a lot weaker.

That's why trees here tip over root and all instead of snapping off. The plate lifts, the lawn humps up on one side, and the tree leans toward the house it was shading. Nothing stands between this town and open water in either direction, so a gust arrives at full strength off the bay or off the Gulf. Pines shed their tops. Oaks split down the seam where two trunks have been pressing on each other since they were young.

The quiet part of the year is when this work is worth doing. Deadwood out. Crown thinned so wind moves through the tree instead of pushing on it. A split trunk cabled and braced if the tree's worth keeping, and anything already dead taken down while there's time to do it properly. After a storm, every crew on the peninsula is spoken for and you take whatever turns up at the door. Booked ahead of the weather, the same work costs less and gets done better.

Putting a Pinellas Park yard back together

Getting the tree out is half the job. The thing people around here ask about most is the stump, and with reason. Grind it and you can lay sod over the spot or set a shed on it. Leave it and you get ants, plus a soft patch in the lawn that keeps sinking for years while the wood rots underneath. Grinding takes the flare and the surface roots below grade, then the hole gets filled back so the ground sits level with everything around it.

Plenty of this town is deed restricted parks and neat small lots, where a bare patch of sand gets noticed from the street. So the work isn't over when the wood is on the truck. Sod goes down over the ground out area, and shell or mulch gets topped up wherever the crew disturbed it. Driveway and road get blown off before anybody pulls away. That last bit is what neighbors judge a tree crew on, and it's the cheapest part of the whole job to get right.

Deb Boyle had that whole run of work done in one visit: "I hired Jacob and his crew to do some stump grinding, clean up Areca palms, take a semi dead tree down, place a new layer of shells, and lay some sod. What a great job at a reasonable price. Jacob and his crew worked diligently, even through the rain. The place looks so neat and fresh again."

Getting a price in Pinellas Park

Call (941) 580-4949, or send the form if you'd rather start online. Somebody comes out, walks the yard with you, and leaves a written estimate with the scope on it: which trees, what comes off them, whether the stump gets ground, where the wood ends up. Ask for proof of insurance and it gets emailed over. Hours are Monday to Saturday, 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and Sunday, 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM.