Pruning apple trees

dehaang

Have a few apple trees and was wondering how to prune them?

Garry Brockley

Dehaang a few more details would be appreciated like size type location what you want from the tree ie do you have an orchard that produces fruit or are they just landscape trees?
I used to do alot of work around the Waltham area, so if you get stuck i might be able to get a descent arb contact for you

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dehaang

Still looking for information on how to prune my apple trees. The size of my trees are about 5' to 6' tall. They are located in a protected area of my property with a bush on the north side. I would like to know how to prune my trees to get the best fruit production from them.

dehaang

Was also wondering what time of the year we should be pruning our fruit trees.:tree-huggin

arborjockey

my suggestion would be.....well put it this way. would you go to a ferrari blog site and ask them how to tune up your car? yeah i would hire a profesional. if you like the trees that is

windthrown

Lots of information depending on age of your orchard, what you want, and so forth. Its complex, but not as complicated as tuning a Ferrari (been there, done that, with 3 sidedraft carbs, its impossible to ever get them right, not unlike carb balancing the dual carbs on a Volvo P-1800).

windthrown

Depends. Simple answer is main pruning in mid to late winter, as close to bud break as possible. Depends on your location, and I will not try to figure out the seasons down under. In California I pruned apple orchards in late January or early February (mid winter), as bud break is a month earlier down there than it is here. I typically prune our apple trees here in early March (late winter). I also French prune in mid to late summer to remove water spouts and attain better scaffolding and shape. If you are doing espallier you need to train and prune them constantly when they are younger. It is nearly impossible to over-prune an apple tree. Once the scaffolding and spur system is set up you need to prune about 90% of all new growth. I typically pruned for a central leader scaffold, and sometimes espallier. Avoid an open vase scaffolding (too many branches from one place). Too hard to explain that in a simple essay here. Read my stuff over on AS for more details, or get a good book on fruit tree pruning. Some of the old Rodale Press books are good if you can find them. Most are now out of print. Sunset, Ortho and HP Books have some good books on pruning as well. You can also get some good information on the web. Do a Google search on 'central leadar pruning' and you will be off and running.

Here is a good one to start with:

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag29.html

arborjockey

Ah the triple side draft. Grew up around V.W.s in hawaii and they set throttle plates on multiple carbs. (Down draft carbs) KNOW THERE RUNNNING TURBOS WITH DOUBLE PUMP CARBS. didnt mean caps lock. on the ferrari id suggest vaccume or mercury guages to set evenly. what are you doin workn on ferraris and were u at in th n.w. My family has a farm in Yamhill or. by mcminnville.

windthrown

Not working on Ferraris here. Had a friend with one in the bay area. Also had a friend with a Austin Healey 3000 with the dual side drafts like my Volvo. I had a vacuum side draft tester with the ball in the side glass tube to measure them but that only covered one carb at a time. Problem with them is that as you put the tester on one carb, it affects the air flow and throws the other/s off. PITA to balance them right. On my quad bikes, I had a quad mercury vacuum tester that was a lot better. I no longer work on anyone else's cars except my own! I work on other people's Stihls though. They are easy. I am slapping together another 026 this afternoon as a matter of fact.

I know Yamhill, Newberg, Gaston, and the Trask River area pretty well. I do a lot of off-roading up around Hagg Lake and over at Browns Camp. I am from around here, originally from Lake Oswego. I lived in California for 35 years and then returned here about 5 years ago and lived wiyth my ex for 4 years on her sheep farm south of Eugene. I have a brother in Hillsboro, a nephew that lives in Gresham, my dad lived in Gresham, and I am now living at my other brother's house south of PDX in Clackamas Co., just South West Linn. Near a place called Wanker's Corner actually...

Wank wank wank...

Garry Brockley

it probably wouldn't be called that if you weren't caught all those times as a youngster hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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windthrown

No one around here (or anywhere in the US for that matter) even knows what wanking means. Seriously. Wanker's Corners is a spiffy little corner store, real estate office and local tavern. We go to the tavern after ski patrol meetings. They have not a clue here.

arborjockey

Wankers corner
If you click my profile youll see a picture of my first big removal. It was 5 big cedars. Driving toward Tualatin away from wankers, directly across the big church is a road to the right. If your around the area take that road it sweeps to the left, take the next right. The next house on the right has a big pine thats on my removal list.
Have you heard of A B Chrisman logging. Iv worked with George for awhile. Out in Carton Area I know G.W. (Gary Ward) and Richard at Bee logging. I graduated from tualatin h.s. my dad grew up in Tigard. I spent 5 yrs in Redding N. calif.

stolen thread

windthrown

I know where that road is, and the tree... I do not know many loggers left here. Most I know are down around Eugene/Roseburg, and some out in Banks. Then of course the guys on the AS forum from all over the PNW.

Eric Frei

Taken from http://www.treeworld.info/attachment...ng_msivyer.pdf in this post Another Almond Tree

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KevinE

I received a call from a customer recently regarding how I prune her apple tree. I've been pruning this tree for 7-8 years & she's always said she's been happy with the results. However, she'd listened to a gardening programme on ABC radio & they had been discussing how to train small apple trees to fit into small yards. Her tree is fairly large (5M tall before I prune it each year) & she has a courtyard home with a very small yard. I have no idea what rootstock her tree is grafted onto, but it's extremely vigorous! The tree primarily serves as an amenity tree, providing shade & aesthetics in summer, with the added benefit of fruit! She has numerous under-plantings under & around the tree. She pointed me in the direction of the MP3 on the ABC website & asked me to listen to it. Anyway, I'll be off there in July again to prune her tree & think she wants me to follow the suggestions on the MP3; cut the tree back to hip height in winter & then let it grow for 2 years, summer pruning either before, or after the equinox to either encourage new growth if it's a bit thin (I doubt that on this tree!) or thin it out if there's too many epics (very likely!). The suggestion by a presenter of "rotating" branches is what I do with roses, but if I do what is being suggested, I'll have to do it to her tree to keep it down to the desired height. Also, the under-plantings under the tree will get no direct light at all in summer. anyway, here's the podcast, it goes for quite some time, but please have a listen & let me know your thoughts! I should add that the guest speakers are very well respected in the fruit growing industry here.

Talkback Gardening - ABC Adelaide - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Branching Out TreeCare

Target the 3Ds...dead, diseased and damaged...oh and decending branches. Then prune any rubbing internal branches back to an outward facing node and retain the branch if nicely positioned inside the crown. Apples respond really well to pruning and should be dealt to if the crown size is way to big.
Keep a good scaffold structure and try to keep the globular crown shape balanced. Prune off the epicormic/ water shoots and shorten the vegetative gangly extension growth. Fertiliser applied in spring . If it looks balanced and the same thin-ness all through the tree then your pretty much done . If common sense suggests it's finished then you've done it... if not ask an orchardist or arborist. Prune when its finished fruiting.

Hope this forms the basis of your pruning attack. Paul.

KevinE

Did you have a listen to the podcast Paul?

Please take it as a given that I understand the 3D's, cutting crossovers, wine glass shape concept for backyard fruit trees. What these guys are suggesting is way different!

Cheers mate!

Eric Frei

It makes perfect sense what was said in that program.

I do not think most arborists would make the best orchardists because they have a conditioning that pruning has to be to AS4373 which excludes fruit and nut trees.

How they prune in orchards is brutal. Like on that program the apple trees are 1m apart now and they get 2500 trees per hectare where as in the old days of large vase shaped trees they got 500, the trees are 1m apart in their rows, and rows are 4m apart for machinery to access, trees get approx 4m2 of space, trees are grown like inverted cones now and kept compact, no ladder picking of fruit.

I bet productivity is up, fruit volumes per hectare are up, diseases are down.

The pruning methods are production based.

Here for mangoes they drive machines down the isles and lop them sides and top.

But if you have an old tree and want to cut it down to waste height to manage it, and then have to wait 2 years for fruit on epicormic respouts .... why not cut the whole tree down and plant a more suitable species and manage it from the start!

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KevinE

Hi Eric, thanks for your reply. Yes, it does indeed make perfect sense!

Personally, I don't think that the tree would make much of an amenity tree though, in that it wouldn't provide much in the way of shade, aesthetics or privacy, but it would definitely be more manageable.

This is a really small yard with lots of paving, colorbond fences & neighbours in very close proximity.

Having said that, the presenter of that show on the ABC also has a column in the Advertiser on Fridays & clearly thinks the subject worthy of further discussion, as his column yesterday was in the same vein. The big difference between his column & the podcast was that yesterday he was suggesting a tweaked version that he calls "multiple cordon", whereby the tree is still cut right back to hip height & then 2 opposing horizontal epicormics are selected to become main branches & 2-4 vertical epicormics are selected to become main fruit bearing branches on each horizontal branch. I like this version for home fruit trees a lot more than the podcast version, but I would prefer it done on 3-4 main horizontal branches, not 2. But that's just my personal preference.

Or, like you said, why not just remove the tree & plant something more suitable!

I'm really glad that customer called me! It's got me thinking outside the square I managed to do something very similar to a lemon tree planted in the wrong spot today & also a peach in an even worse spot, which I pruned to an espalier.

Eric Frei

Here's a yard that I used to prune every year, I pruned so there was always fruit thinking a few years ahead. Pay attention to the type of pruning on the middle tree, that's easiest to tell.

Before:


After:

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KevinE

Ahhh yes! That's exactly it!

Eric Frei

No collar cuts, I leave atleast a 2 node stub on retained sprouts as insurance so I have another to cut back to if it doesn't sprout.

I try to leave 1/3 to 1/2 of existing fruit bearing limbs somehow, but they have already copped their hard prune a few years earlier. The mandarin tree I cut back to 1m high, where the trunk come up and branched I cut the branches back hard (stubs), then trained some new sprouts and headed some back and cut some off. The framework has been established but as a fruit bearing branch gets too long or high I cut it back leaving 2 nodes.

To me I find this fun to do, like I said there's always fruit and a decent looking tree.

Also a lot of hand loppers and saws used, chainsaws are too brutal and tear.

New growth will hang down in some places laden with fruit.

Here's a closer up, notice the inverted cone shape on the prune I did on the tree in the back.

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