Time is running out. If you haven’t given your backyard fruit trees their annual dormant pruning, you should get to it as soon as possible. Deciduous trees, including apples, pears, plums, peaches, figs, apricots and cherries, are awakening from their winter’s sleep. Sharpen your pruning shears and get the pruning done.
If you are new at this annual maintenance chore, you need to know why and how to do it. Why? Pruning is needed to invigorate and promote new growth, maintain and renew fruiting wood, distribute fruit wood throughout the tree, and sometimes to reduce the crop to prevent limb breakage.
This is also the time to correct problems that have been neglected or that you haven’t noticed, such as broken or diseased branches that need to be removed. With the leaves gone, it is easy to see those long, greedy water sprouts and suckers that need to be removed. Now is also the time to thin out branches that are crowded, rubbing or too tall.
Plan ahead for the harvest and keep the fruit low enough to reach. If your fruit trees are very young or perhaps newly planted, they need to be carefully trained to ensure that they will have a strong, well-proportioned structure, with maximum fruit wood.
The most common design is the open center or vase shape, which permits optimum sun exposure to all parts of the tree. To achieve this shape, select three side branches that are evenly spaced around the trunk, starting about 18 inches above ground level. They should be four to six inches apart vertically. These will be the tree’s primary scaffold branches. Remove all other branches. Avoid leaving branches with tight crotches, which tend to split when the branches get older and heavier.
If the tree has been in the ground for a year, select secondary scaffold branches and thin out the remaining growth. The result will be a strong, well-shaped tree with six to eight scaffold branches evenly distributed around the tree.
There are other training methods, including the central leader method that is often used for walnuts. For this approach, the main leader branch is allowed to be dominant and all the side branches take off from it.
Another excellent system is the espalier, where the young branches are tied to a trellis made of wood or wire. This method is popular in Europe and well adapted to gardens where space is limited or where a more formal look is desired.
Deciduous fruit trees differ in their fruit-bearing habits, and we need to allow for these differences when pruning. Peaches and nectarines, which bear fruit on one-year-old wood, need heavier pruning to stimulate new growth. Apples and pears bear most of their fruit on long-lived spurs, so give them a lighter pruning. Plums, apricots and almonds bear most of their fruit on spurs, but short-lived spurs that require renewing every two to three years. Cherries also bear their fruit on spurs but usually require little pruning. Walnuts also need little pruning and should never be topped. Walnuts are not picked off the tree but picked off the ground after being shaken off the trees.
To prune safely, you need a three-legged orchard ladder unless your trees are espaliered, dwarf or semi-dwarf and can be pruned from the ground. Do not use a common four-legged household ladder. They are hazardous in soft or rough ground. You can position a three-legged ladder on sloping or rough ground in a stable manner, and you can push the legs down into soft ground for stability.
Essential pruning tools include long-handled lopping shears, hand shears and a pruning saw designed for cutting green wood—preferably a folding type that you can carry in your pocket. Sharpen your shear blades before beginning. A pitchfork and rake are handy for brush removal, and a mattock is a good tool for exposing suckers around the base of trees so they can be cleanly cut off with saw or loppers.