Arbs and Pinecones, Are They a Concern?

This one comes from Erica. She sent us some pictures of her arborvitae. She says ”I just want your input or opinion on these arborvitae we’ve had along our driveway. They really have a lot of brown seeds on them that I haven’t seen in years prior. Is it a concern due to age or the dry weather? And also when is the best time to trim them ?”

Those are actually the pine cones. Arborvitae do get pine cones. They’re really teeny tiny and that’s just an environmental thing, some years they’re gonna seed much harder than others, kind of like oaks producing acorns some years. There’s a lot of acorns in other years, but not so many this year.

But that is a normal thing. The dryness is probably a big part of it. Those are much larger in the picture for those that can’t see it there. It’s one of those things that the cones or the seeds will fall off there and it’s gonna look nice and green, just like it always has in the past. It’s just a cycle that the plants go through. 

I see that there’s some chemical sprayed along the edge of the driveway. Make sure when you’re spraying that chemical to kill that grass to keep it out of the gravel driveway, you’re doing it at a time where it’s not windy because you don’t want that chemical to drift two feet over onto that big beautiful row of arborvitae. Because that would not be good at all.

So trimming, probably early spring would be best if you trim them now, we’re going into winter. You can have some issues doing it this time of year. The best time to do it would probably be end of March beginning April.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).