orchard pruning – Xtremehorticulture

Let’s Get Ready to Prune Fruit Trees!

Q. Can I prune fruit trees now or do I need to wait until they are dormant in January? Will you be giving fruit tree pruning classes again this year? A. Prune fruit trees lightly with a hand pruner any time there is a problem at any time during the year. Heavy pruning that requires a saw or loppers should be done during winter months after leaves have dropped. Hand pruner or hand shears for making cuts less than 1 inch in diameter Removal of limbs with loppers or a saw is easier after leaf drop when you can see the arrangement of limbs and branches and where to cut. Avoid using loppers or a saw during summer months because of sunburn and damage to the trees by our intense sunlight. Loppers used for large cuts greater than 1 inch. The maximum size for a lopper depends on the lopper and how well it’s maintained and the person doing the pruning. Some people are not physically capable of making some larger cuts. Once cleaned and sanitized, they should never be placed on the ground because of sanitation. The majority of pruning cuts for fruit trees will remove entire limbs and not leaving “stubs” where branches are cut off. Many of the desirable pruning cuts remove vertical growth, upward or downward, which produce little to no fruit and interfere with light entering the canopy. One of my favorite tools for cutting large limbs is a Sawzall with the appropriate pruning blade. I will offer pruning classes of fruit trees on Saturdays beginning in mid-December. Watch the newspaper or my blog for exact dates and locations.

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Lower Limbs of Fruit Trees Too High Off of the Ground

Leave a Comment / fruit trees, make smaller, orchard pruning, prune back, re-establish limbs, reestablish / xtremehorticulture

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? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tctjMa7aHEQ 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.

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Controlling Growth of Shrubs More Than Water and Fertilizer

Leave a Comment / fertilizer, irrigation, orchard pruning, plants too large, size control, slow growth, water / xtremehorticulture

Q. You have always have stated to prune shrubs and trees when they are dormant, but it seems mine do not go dormant in the winter. They continue to grow even though they get water only once a week. I halved their fertilizer application but they continue to grow larger than I want them to. Why do they grow when they should be dormant and when should I prune them to slow their growth and spread? A. Shrubs desire to reach their mature size. Keeping them smaller than this will require more maintenance than selecting one that is the size you need. Select shrubs by determining the size you need and finding one that fits that size at maturity. Dormancy here is not the same as dormancy in Minnesota. Dormancy here, in some cases for some plants, means that they may stop growing as much, not that they stop growing at all. Just depends on the plant and its location. Where the plant is located in the landscape also dictates its level of dormancy. Very warm microclimates in the yard may mean that some plants never totally shut down during the winter while in colder spots they do. Hot south and west facing walls with little winter wind are the warmest locations. Cutting back on water and fertilizer will help but they do not act like an “on and off switch” for plants. Think of fertilizer and water more like a “rheostat” where it can increase and decrease growth but not totally shut it down. At some point though, turning down the water and fertilizer will damage the plant. The real solution is to match plant mature size to the site. Focus your pruning on older growth and remove it from deep inside the canopy leaving the younger growth still flourishing. Prune in the winter months. Avoid trimming on the edge of the canopy whenever you can. Hide your cuts if at all possible. They should not be obvious. This will help keep them smaller.

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When Should I Cut My Grape Vines Back?

4 Comments / cold damage, freezing damage, orchard pruning, table grapes, wine grapes / xtremehorticulture

Q. When should I cut my grape vines back? They’re on a trellis, and are 1 year old. During the summer they spread out very well, and produced several large groups of table grapes. A. I would wait until late February or early March to prune them. We still have some potentially difficult times to go through this winter for grapes. Cutting them early may result in a loss of bud wood and fruit production. When pruning you will cut back this past years growth (it will be a different color) so that only one or two buds remain. I prefer two. Also I usually prune it back so that ten or twelve buds remain if I do it early. Then just before bud swelling in the spring (like about early March) I cut then spurs back to two buds. This way if there is dieback during the winter I won’t lose the fruit producing spur.

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Pruning Fruit Trees to Control Their Size

3 Comments / backyard, fruit trees, orchard pruning, small spaces / xtremehorticulture

These full-sized peach trees are 17 years old and lowered each year to 6 1/2 feet tall Pruning at our orchard is a two step process: first for size control and secondly to enhance production. Pruning for size control is done the same way for all the fruit trees but pruning for production varies among the different types of fruit and how and where the fruit is produced on the tree. We keep the size of all fruit trees so that the orchard is ladderless, easy and safe to perform work and harvest. This also allows us to plant trees closer together and get more fruit production in a smaller area. It also reduces our work load so we can get it done faster. The tallest branches are identified visually. These branches are visually traced to where they join another branch somewhere around 6 to 6 1/2 feet off of the ground. Initial pruning for size control can begin before leaf drop, usually in November when leaves are beginning to turn color and we are sure all tree growth has stopped for the remainder of the year. If you have only a few trees to lower then you can wait until after all the leaves have dropped. If leaves are hanging on even into December you can turn off the water to the trees for two weeks and then turn the water back on again. This will stress the trees moderately and accelerate leaf drop. Trees heights are lowered to 6 to 6 ½ feet tall using vutually all thinning cuts. The tallest limbs are identified, followed visually down to a point of attachment around 6 feet off of the ground and lowered to the proper height with thinning cuts. The pruning cut is made at a “crotch” or where two branches come together. This leaves terminal buds intact to resume growth next spring. Since we have our trees in rows, we must create space around each tree so that we can spray and harvest. We create space between trees by identifying limbs that are encroaching on a neighboring trees “space” or need to be removed so we can get between them. We trace these limbs back to a point of attachment (crotch) with another limb and remove it with a thinnning cut, not a heading cut. Limbs that do not support fruit high enough to keep the fruit off of the ground or out of the reach of rabbits is removed with thinning cuts.

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