SYSTEMIC TREE INJECTIONS

The plant care industry has grown in leaps and bounds. Many chemicals that we once used to control various insect and disease problems have now been taken off the market and banned from use due to a number of detrimental factors to humans and other beneficial organisms.

Back in the day, the preferred way to apply pest control products to trees and shrubs was to use high-pressure hydraulic sprayers that would shoot the chemical (mixed with water) high into the tree canopy, covering the leaves and twigs with the desired product to control the pest. Fortunately, nowadays the chemical products that are on the market are highly formulated and tested to be as target-specific as possible to control the pest while being minimally effective to non-target objects. At Ulrich Tree Care, we will utilize aerial applications for certain situations where the benefit to the tree is high and the effects to non-target pests are low.

But as the industry advances in the availability of new and improved pest control products, it is also improving in the way those products are applied and introduced into the tree. The biggest improvement made in the last 30 years is in micro-, and macro systemic tree injections. Utilizing this process, a small hole in drilled or impaled into the trunk of the tree (or it’s roots) and a concentrated chemical product is injected directly into the vascular system (sap stream) of the target plant.

The benefits of systemic tree injections are vast:

  • no possibility of the pesticide getting on non-target objects

  • a much smaller, more concentrated amount of product is needed to accomplish the desired control

  • extended protection of problem pest vs aerial spraying

  • less exposure of pest product to the person applying the product

  • can apply the product in almost any weather condition (no worry about wind, drift, or rain)


Systemic tree injections can be applied in one of two ways:

  1. direct injection into the vascular system of the tree via the trunk or root flare or,

  2. injecting concentrated chemical mixed with water into the soil near the root zone of the tree

Systemic tree injections should only be done by trained, educated and licensed professional arborist.

While the exposure to the chemicals used in tree injections is much more limited than in traditional aerial spray applications, the products used are much more concentrated. The process of injecting the product into the tree must be done properly or more damage could be caused to the tree than the pest you are trying to control. Ulrich Tree Care’s owner, Chuck Ulrich has been injecting trees since 1985. As the process and products of tree injections have changed greatly over the last 35+ years, we have kept up with the current, most effective techniques and products. Contact us today to see if your tree can benefit from a systemic tree injection.