Tree Service in Bastrop, TX

Bastrop County has a tree mix you do not get anywhere else in Central Texas: loblolly pine growing alongside post oak, blackjack oak, bluejack oak, cedar elm and eastern redcedar. That changes both what goes wrong and when it is safe to cut.

The oak wilt calendar comes first

If you take one thing from this page, take this. Oak wilt is a fungal disease spread between oaks by sap-feeding beetles, and it kills. Texas A&M Forest Service guidance is to avoid pruning or wounding oaks from February through June, when those beetles are most active.

So our default is simple:

• Oak work gets scheduled outside February–June wherever it possibly can be.
• When it cannot wait — storm damage, a genuine hazard — every cut is painted immediately, not at the end of the day.
• Tools are sterilised between trees, because the saw is the other way it travels.

Storm damage does not respect the calendar, and a split limb over a roof in April is a hazard that has to be dealt with. The point is not to never touch an oak in spring. The point is to know the rule, work to it when there is a choice, and take the precautions when there is not. A contractor who offers to top your oaks in April without mentioning any of this is telling you what they do not know.

What we take on

What decides the price

Almost never the height of the tree. What matters is what is under and around it:

• What it can fall on. A pine in open pasture comes down in one piece. The same pine over a roof, a fence and a power service gets taken down in sections, and that is a completely different job.
• Access for equipment and haul-off. If a chipper can get to the tree, the number drops. If everything has to be carried out through a back gate, it does not.
• What happens to the wood. Hauled off costs more than chipped on site or left cut and stacked for firewood. On rural lots, stacking is often the sensible answer.
• Stump. Grinding is a separate decision — tell us up front whether you want it gone or are happy to leave it.

Where we will say no

Some tree work belongs with a crew that does nothing else — large removals over structures or utilities, anything near live power lines, or work that needs climbing and rigging beyond what we run. When a job is that, we will tell you straight and point you at someone properly set up for it rather than take the booking and learn on your property.

Power lines in particular: do not let anyone, us included, work near a live service drop. That is a call to the utility, not to a landscaper.

Getting a number

Tree work gets walked. We need to see what is around it, where it can fall, and how we would get a machine and the debris out. Photographs from two or three angles, plus a note on what is nearby, will tell us whether it is straightforward before we drive out.

We work across Bastrop County — Bastrop, Smithville, Cedar Creek, Paige, Red Rock and Rosanky.