fruit trees – Perennial Favorites http://www.pfplants.com Growers of plants particularly suited to Colorado's challenging conditions. Wed, 01 Jun 2016 16:04:40 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.2 Time to Prune http://www.pfplants.com/?p=210 Sun, 27 Feb 2011 14:48:28 +0000 http://www.pfplants.com/?p=210 Continue reading →]]> It’s easy to ignore pruning until it’s too late. I have an old apple tree that hasn’t been properly pruned in years. Every year I plan to prune, but March, the best month for pruning fruit trees along the Front Range, is filled with lots of other chores and pruning gets put at the bottom of a very long list.

Here I am, on the first step of the ladder, holding a saw and wondering where to start. This is a Jonathan apple tree, a 26 year old tree. Jonathans have good flavor, and are good for fresh eating or cooking, but they are not very resistant to fire blight. Fire blight is a bacterial disease that affects apple trees and pear trees.  If you have an old orchard on your property, it’s very likely the trees are infected with fire blight.  New varieties are available that are resistant to disease, and we don’t sell Jonathan trees at the nursery because of their disease problems. I have a soft spot for this old apple tree, but I plan to plant more resistant varieties, too, so that I’ll have new fruit trees coming on as this one declines. If you are trying to improve the health of a tree with fire blight, as I am, pruning should always be done before the tree leafs out in spring, to prevent the spread of disease. The worst time to prune an apple tree is when it is flowering and during early summer. If you missed your opportunity to prune in the spring, late summer is another option.  An important point to remember is that you don’t want to prune more than 10%-25% from a neglected tree in any one year. Rejuvenation pruning can take a number of years to complete.

As I start to prune I’m going to try to remove the worst of the water sprouts (vigorous shoots that grow straight up) and any limbs that are broken or dead. Apple trees produce most of their fruit on horizontal branches, so your goal is to create an open, well-branched tree.  Don’t try to cut branches that are too big to handle. Any branch that is bigger than 3/4″ diameter should be removed with a saw. Smaller twigs and branches can be removed with loppers or hand pruners.

When you first plant a fruit tree it seems as if it will never grow, that you’ll never harvest fruit from it. Cutting any part of it seems brutal and unnecessary.  You want it to grow! But pruning stimulates growth and can actually help your tree reach the size and shape you want.

Check out our catalog on the tab above to see the apple trees and other fruit trees we will have at the nursery this spring.  If you have a young fruit tree, check out this link for more information:  http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1211.html

 

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