The late Corwin Davis of Bellevue, Michigan used to advice orchardists to prune their apple trees to be open enough to "throw a cat through".
Modern cats seem less willing to volunteer for the task so using a basketball as a proxy for Felix will reduce the pruner's need for hydrogen peroxide and bandages.
The rule has some flexibility to it. You are doing fine if you can achieve 100% penetration in 8-of-10 throws or 2-of-10 throws. The nature of trees being what they are they will happily do their thing.
If you over-prune then it will have filled in for the next growing season and you will have only lost a bit of one year's production.
If you under-pruned then you still improved the tree. Air and sunlight will penetrate more deeply into the canopy. Leaf health will improve. Average fruit size and flavor will also improve.
Stems from one Asian Pear tree. The butt end is about 3/4" in diameter.
Trees have different growth habits. Most pear trees want to grow a super-abundance of vertical or nearly-vertical branches. They look like a water tumbler stuffed with drinking straws.
Some apple trees are tip bearers and their yield is strongly reduced by pruning. Novaspy is one such cultivar.
Other apple trees carry flower buds in non-spur buds and you can remove an obscene amount of wood and they will still give you a full crop. Liberty falls into this category. It may be due to Liberty having at least two species of ornamental crabs (Malus floribunda and Malus X robusta) in its pedigree.
It is easy to get tied into knots when confronted with pruning fruit trees. Just remember Corwin Davis's rule about being able to throw a cat through the canopy and it will be fine.
Where I live we have had more wind the past two years than I have ever seen in my life and this year is starting out worse and I don't see it getting any better. We also had a couple of ice storms which are very unusual and as a result I have had quite a bit of tree damage. So when I can get out there without my snowshoes I'm going to prune the trees to reduce spread and promote upward growth to try to make them stronger. Won't be throwing any cats at them. ---ken
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I did was plant 10 varieties of apple trees when we bought our (honestead) property.
ReplyDeleteThe deer abused them for years, killed a few, 1 has been replaced (with one of those 'cocktail' varieties with two types grafted to same tree).
5 years on, I'm struggling with pruning, but starting to SEE apples (maybe this year I'll get to eat one). Admittedly I'm shy with the pruners b/c the deer seemed to have set them back. Several are dwarf varieties as well (NOW I know why they were on sale!)
I'll have to research that Davis fellow. Wifes allergic to cats.