I’m done with this dormant season’s pruning and I noticed something unusual. I feel like with apples I’m being too selective in where I cut and I’m spending over an hour per 9’ wide tree.
It’s not bad because I enjoy it and I only do it when I have free time but it seems like I prune cherries of the same size in 5-10 minutes. In cherries I mostly make sure branches don’t interfere with each other and renew a scaffold here and there.
Has anyone noticed a similar tendency with apples? Do you try to follow the 3-2-1 rule? I have no idea how long farmers spend on pruning each apple tree but I feel like I may be doing something wrong just because of how long it takes.
To receive proper training in pruning you should visit a multi-day course, but I can give you some basic clues on the process how professionals where I live are approaching it:
First you always need to identify and evaluate basic things about the tree, for example, in what life-stage the tree is in (young, main-bearing phase, senescent phase), it‘s vital signs (look for the length of last years growth, also for damage and diseases), it‘s architecture from a standpoint of stability (can it hold the weight of fruit, wind, snow?) and it‘s architecture from a standpoint of usability (are fruit easily pickable down and in the middle, or only in the periphery?). It also helps to know if the variety has an unusual growth pattern, e.g. fruiting on last years growth, big fruit/small fruit, stable or bendy wood.
After you identified those 3 functions, stability, vitality and usability, and set your goal which of these have to be improved and with that clear goal in mind, you can make the correct cuts if you already know how to prune trees, much quicker, and of course evaluate next year if they lead to the desired results.
At this point I feel like taking care of large apple trees is more gardening than fruit growing because of how much effort it is for mostly aesthetic benefit . The fruit you get from the tree is more of an additional bonus at this point for having put so much work into growing a large and beautiful tree
