Q. I watched your videos on pruning your peach trees for a lateral orchard. We planted some bare root plums and peach trees last Saturday. I want to do a lateral orchard but there are no branches down at knee level. They are at about hip level. Would I still cut the trunk off at knee level? Would branches or buds form down lower if I did that or would it just kill my trees?
A. It should be a ladderless Orchard since what we are trying to accomplish is to keep the trees close enough to the ground that we don’t have to use ladders for pruning or harvesting the fruit. I could see how listening to the word ladderless on a video might be heard as lateral. If a peach or plum has been in the ground for a while, I would not recommend cutting the trunk at knee height. You will run the risk of severely damaging or even killing the tree. It depends on the tree but with plum or peach it would be very risky to cut an older part of the tree to reestablish the scaffold limbs. Now, if your tree was an almond then you could cut larger diameter wood and it will regrow below the cut.
You will have to work with the tree structure that you have. Maybe you will not be able to keep it at 6 1/2 to 7 feet tall but you certainly could keep it under 10 feet tall and still have a sizable harvest. My videos are available on Youtube by searching for Extremehort. I will be posting some new ones next week.