Pruning Made Easy

Introduction:

The art of pruning is fairly simple, but very few ever bother to learn it. Simply put, pruning fruit trees is to produce more fruit, and pruning shade trees is to accent and beautify a yard. A friend who is a contractor had to cut back one of my trees a bit when he installed the new roof. He assured me he took great care, and treated my tree just as he would one of his own. No wonder the world is such a mess today! It was terrible. I am sure he treated my tree as he would his own—that is what is so sad. But the good news for me, and for you, is that plants recover quickly. I fixed some of the damage immediately, and the rest the next year. Two years later the tree looked great, and no one could tell it had been butchered.

My sister-in-law had aperfectly short, round, dense apple tree that produced tiny, rotten fruit, and she wanted it fixed. Rather than allowing me to do it for free, she insisted on spending $1000 on a “professional” company. She also stated she wanted it round. Round is for boxwood shrubs and laurel hedges. Round is for topiary gardens. Round and Fruit are incompatible terms. My sister-in-law never did get fruit from that tree, though she did support a needy immigrant family with her cash.

Fruit trees:

“The 4 Ds bought a vase which was aesthetically appealing.” That is all you need to know to prune a fruit tree. The four Ds are: damaged, dead, diseased and down. Every limb that is damaged, diseased or dead is pruned off, along with every limb that grows even slightly at a down angle. (These limbs produce the weakest fruit.) Then we create a vase—remove one limb wherever two intersect, or wherever two occupy the same space. Remove limbs that shoot way up into the air without branching (suckers). Remove limbs until light and air can get to every branch and every leaf. Create an open vase. Finally, if you want, you can balance the tree, or shape it, to please your aesthetic sense. Two facts must be remembered. Fruit grows on second year wood, and fruit trees need to have 1/3 of the wood pruned off each year (1/2 in the case of peaches). If you let a tree go two or more seasons, you may need to prune 1/3 in the Spring (after the sap slows and the blossoms wilt) and another 1/3 in the Fall when the leaves are dropping. My favorite time to prune the very high, inaccessible branches, is when the fruit is ripe. Cut any branch you cannot pick, carefully, and harvest the fruit. I walked around the block last Fall when a neighbor was massacring his apple trees. I wanted to help, but despite several minutes of pleasant conversation, could not finagle an invitation. He removed all of the new growth, and left old wood. This year he had no blossoms (of course) and no fruit. When he asked why, I mentioned the need to prune so that there is always second year wood to bear fruit. He said such pruning requires some thought, and that the tree would always be changing shape and size to a degree. And he is right. Fruit trees are not decorator items. (With proper pruning, disease and bugs are also kept to a minimum, and fruit can be grown organically, or chemicals can be kept to a minimum.)

Decorative trees:

There are no rules, and the “best time to prune is when the clippers are in your hand” (credit to Marianne Binetti—the gardening genius.) Please yourself. But never cut a branch (or a trunk) in the middle. Cut where branches fork. Even tiny forks are okay, and note that the branch you left will grow very quickly, so be sure it has already started in the direction you want.

A final thought: I took a pear tree that had been neglected for 5 years and had achieved some 80 feet. It thought it was a shade tree, and bore no fruit. In two years it was bearing heavily, and stood only 15 feet high. A neglected orchard produced a bumper crop the very Spring after it was pruned, and a cherry tree which had not had fruit in years produced rich succulent fruit. Intelligent pruning is a simple activity that produces very rich rewards.