Apple pruning - Paul Gautschi style

General Fruit Growing
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Hello everyone - I’m sure this group is no stranger to Paul Gautschi and his unique way of pruning and training apple trees to an open center, bending down branches, style. Pictures below to show. I am wondering if anyone else has done this and has more insights to it, or advice etc. They look like semi-dwarf trees to me. I spoke to Paul on the phone years back (he’s not in good health now) and didn’t know then what I know now, so I would have asked A LOT more questions. But, this is what he said about how to makes his trees that way: “As trees grow, once leaves grow out of reach then see leader and prune back to that, rub shoots above that then train your tree from there. As branches grow out the fruit will cause them to bend.”

Sounds so simple haha. Anyways, this style appeals more and more to me as I like all the perks of a semi-standard rootstock, with the ability to keep me off a ladder down the road. All of my trees are young now, so I’d like to explore this option. Please share experiences, and enjoy the beauty of his handiwork below!
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I’ve never heard of Gautschi. Those trees are quite interesting to look at, reminding me of heavily shaped Japanese maples or giant Bonsai, but I have some issues with them. Earlier in my home orcharding experience I was heavily influenced by the great Stephen Hayes, who liked to be able to toss his hat through his pruned trees, indicating good air flow and reduced potential for disease. He trains his trees to open centers, and they look great. I went out into my generally young, modified central leader pruned orchard one winter after watching too damned many of Hayes’ pruning videos and removed the central leaders of many of my oldest trees (5-7 years old at that point). Oops! I had fun for the next couple or three years with plenty of sunburn on inner branches and on apples that had previously not had that issue. I don’t blame Stephen, just my own ignorance. Unsurprisingly (in retrospect), far hotter and sunnier conditions than Stephen grows in makes open center training, of certain fruits, at any rate, a less desirable form. It has been a challenge to regrow those central leaders on many of those trees. I’m guessing from the photos that Mr. Gautschi lives in the Pacific Northwest or at least a location where it’s cooler and cloudier than most of the remaining continental US.

My second issue is that while his trees do produce fruit one doesn’t need a ladder to reach, the tree form does take up a considerable amount of space. One of the perks of a pedestrian orchard is being able to plant more trees in a given space than with trees requiring a ladder to pick (I know there are exceptions here with high density plantings in some trellis systems), but his method negates that. I grow free standing trees pruned to a maximum of 8’ in height spaced approximately 9’ on center in rows separated by 9’, which is pretty darned tight. Estimating from your photos, his recommended tree form would require about double the row spacing and far more than the 9’ on-center spacing I give my trees.

I also wonder about productivity per tree. It seems clear that his system would produce less fruit per acre than many other systems, but it also looks as if it may produce less fruit per tree in an orchard with similar tree spacing than one trained to more traditional (still pedestrian) pruning styles.

I am basing this critique solely on what I see in those photos, so I could be off base on at least the productivity per tree issue. Maybe he has compared his system to others and found it more productive in his growing environment.

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I call those umbrella apple trees. When I was a kid almost all apple trees a saw in my community were pruned this way. Every year a massive amount of watersprouts were removed and production could only happen around the premeter. It always bothered me and I have been glad to see this practice dying out locally.

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Interesting, then my deer could reach them all.

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@HighandDry great thoughts and thanks for the feedback. The fact that he’s in WA state is def a big factor, great observation there. He does this to minimize production bc he only grows for his family, and he has a dog that keeps away most deer (I have 2 dogs, including a Great Pyrenes who never stops working). I may just try this on a few trees for experiment and not do my entire orchard…my trees are only 1-2 years old and would be easy to train at this point. Im in VA so sun burn could be legit concern. Spacing isn’t a concern for me, my trees are on M111, spaced 18’ apart, 24’ apart for rows, but I do have one 120’ row of all dwarf trees on G11. All great thoughts, thanks for the input!

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@JohannsGarden he actually wants to minimize fruit production as he only grows for his family, and he rubs off waterspouts all summer long with his hands, before they need pruning or grow at all. For my purposes, this could be a great way to train a tree. They’re certainly cool to look at. The sunburn mentioned above could be a concern though

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Why not just prune for a more compact size overall with branching starting lower on the trunk. Then you can keep production down and have a self shading canopy.

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Ive watched most of his videos. Here are a few that are on topic.

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Mine would all die of sunburn, but they look cool

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This is really interesting. I wonder if the technique could be applied to pear trees?

I have some young pears on standard rootstock that I deeply want to try to make into relatively low, open-center trees, but I have serious cold feet. I know that this is not how pears “want” to grow, that aggressive pruning of young pears will delay fruiting, that production will be always lower, etc., but I think that mature, open-center, full-size rootstock apple trees, at least, look beautiful. And for a family tree, rather than an orchard tree, I don’t need efficient production, or early production – I just want beauty, good health and lower maintenance once the tree is mature, with some easily-accessible fruit as a bonus. I’m willing to wait a while for fruit.

On the other hand, in Georgia, the sun would probably ruin the scaffolds if the trees were trained in this way (if it is even possible to do with pears at all).

I hope that @alan will make an appearance in this thread.

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There’s some pears pruned this way about a mile up the road from me. They appear to be pretty mature and maintained consistently from year to year. From what I can tell they are not productive enough to be worth the effort.

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I know that learning via videos has become increasingly popular, but I need to be enticed by some text that shows me that watching the video is worth the effort. However, the photos show all I need to know his methods are not mine, but I already know that there are many roads to Rome and I’m sure his would work for some people in some situations. His method requires far too much road for my taste and my methods are about an economy of wood (“roads”) where as little big structural wood as possible is used to support the most possible bearing wood.

Three scaffolds are the best structure for a tree of the type I build if it is an open center. If you read the article I wrote about pruning by numbers it goes into detail of what I mean (I’m beginning to believe that learning from text is going out of style, perhaps a symptom of our education system failing to spend much time on literature). I’m not trying to build an internet brand and make claims of developing some revolutionary training system.

After over 30 years or training apple trees with the math involved in “the economy of wood”, looking at trees in the form of those photos make me wince- it would take me several years to turn them into trees I could stand to look at. I wouldn’t recommend his methods where the sun is strong enough to scorch fruit.

I’m just another “expert” with an opinion, of course. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder, just as is taste and home growers don’t need to worry about the best structure to get the most quality fruit with the least space and the least amount of pruning maintenance. However, the best way to get a tree to perform in a manner that allows care and harvest without a ladder is to use fully dwarfing rootstock. The tree will just want to stay close to the ground and not require a lot of manipulation to make it do so. .

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Hello Alan, where may I read your article on tree training?

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I’m not Alan, obviously, but I have his article bookmarked: Pruning section

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I also don’t like watching videos — I find it laborious, especially if it’s over a topic where I happen to be a subject matter expert myself — but a picture sometimes is worth a thousand words when you are trying to wrap your head around something new that involves conceptualizing things in space. One trick I use for YouTube videos is to (1) enable captions, and (2) crank up the playback speed to the max. That’s not the same as reading, but it diminishes the tedium a bit.

I like the health, vigor, longevity, and appearance of trees on standard rootstock, and I like the notion that the trees that I plant might still be beautiful and productive long after I am gone. That is why I have been trying to plant the specific types of trees recommended by @clarkinks (disease-resistant, long-lived pears!) but pruned according to the methods of @alan (for certain reasons, you seem to be the authority in these parts on how best to prune pome fruit on full-size rootstock). Obviously, this comes with a lot of tradeoffs, but I’m willing to make those.

So far, I’ve been trying to follow your methods — not pruning too much before fruiting, making the painful removal of large-diameter branches, and not prematurely selecting my three main scaffold branches, but on the other hand, if I want an open-center tree, I’m eventually going to have to cut out the leader, and that is scary.

In my case, I care about health and shape first, and fruiting second, so I would like to speed things along toward getting the shape that I want. But this Gautschi (umbrella?) style seems like it would expose a tree to injury in my climate. Also, with all of the main scaffolds pulled below horizontal, the amount of watersprouting would have to be intense, especially on a pear tree.

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Same here. I have really only pruned plum trees in this manner, but without such a weeping style of hang down branches. This actually worked very well to keep the tree small, but at the same time avoid the tree being destroyed by deer. The key to avoiding deer browsing is to start developing the scaffolds at least 5 - 6 feet in the air. The deer here are small and will rarely browse over that height. On the main laterals you don’t want the branches to grow downward. You also don’t want them to grow upward too much either, or the height may get away on you. You definitely need to keep on top of cutting down/pinching off vertical growth so the tree doesn’t start reaching for the sky.

Sure, this small tree form won’t produce bushels of fruit, but who cares if your only growing for a couple or a small family.

Pruning to this style has several distinct advantages. The tree can be kept at a low height for easy harvesting without a ladder, while at the same time not requiring expensive/inconenient fencing protection from deer.

If you attempt to create an open center tree with the scaffolds starting at the standard knee height, deer will browse of all the growth at the lower heights. Then what you are left with is a tree with few laterals where all the branching is out on the tips of the scaffolds. This is not a very safe form to grow a heavy crop on as it risks breaking your main scaffolds as all the weight is at the extreme end of the scaffolds. Don’t ask me how I know.

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OP mentioned deer are not a problem in his location so I took that into account for my recommendation.

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Pruning trees to an umbrella does not require more than 3 scaffold branches and is a very common old-fashioned method for home orchards in the East Coast because once the shape is established it is very easy to sustain the shape.

The easiest way to do it is figure out how tall you want your tree to be and start with two tiers of branches, a lower temporary one and 3-4’ higher your permanent tier. You use the lower tier to tie secondary branches of the first tier down to. You can do it with electric tape.

The method is especially useful for excessively vigorous and woody trees. I once trained a Fuji on vigorous rootstock this way and it helped beat its biennial bearing habit and reduced that excessive vigor. .

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I believe that umbrella trees are often started as central leader where the top tier becomes dominant and isn’t cycled out and replaced to sustain a pyramid shape. Crop weight does the job of bending the branches down to where they are easier to harvest. I’ve even seen commercial orchards of free standing trees managed this way and also seen a case where the orchard had become dominated by umbrella trees and then converted back to the more efficient (in terms of apples per acre) Christmas tree shape by biting the bullet and removing the upper scaffolds and allowing subdominant branches below to help reshape the trees.

I usually train the ancient and huge apple trees I’m often called on to manage to a weeping shape that is a lot like an umbrella form with 3 or 4 huge scaffolds over 20 feet tall trained to a weep. .

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Those tree’s look very beautiful. But like others mentioned i see some downsides. But every pruning method/tree shape has pro’s and con’s. I think it depends on your situation/wishes which one matches your desires best.

For me the biggest downside here:
-Is that you are somewhat working against the nature of how a tree grows.

I have a few books on pruning. I can’t find the exact passage. But there are some “pruning rules” (remember that those rules here are an approximation. so braking them is fine. But you want to understand the basis behind the rule before doing so)

one of the “rules” this tree form “brakes”
is to
-not let (limb) branch angle go below horizontal. Or not let the growing tip (end) of the branch go below any other part of it. And thus loosing the apical dominance of that growing end of that branche.

The basis behind this “rule” has to do with vigor. A lot of things control the vigor of growing points on a tree. But generally higher up means more vigor. Thus by bending down limb branches past down the horizontal. The tip of the branch is below a lot of the rest of the branch. And since the higher parts of that branch then get more vigor. You will likely get a lot of strong vertical growth on those points (some-times called water sprouts). And very little extension growth on the tip of the branch.

This leads to a high need for a lot of (summer) pruning. And also makes it harder to extend or replace thicker branches. Since the vigor goes to the water sprouts on the highest part of the arching branch. And not to the end.

Once limbs get older. They tend to have less viable/active buds. And i think you will get less water sprouts at the hight points of the arching branches. However if you get increased vigor from a lack of fruit (night frost, biannual harvest etc) you might be amazed by the amount of strong vertical growth at the tops of the arch of the branches you have to deal with.

TLDR
in my opinion this tree form has

Disadvantage.
-going against natural tendency of a tree to grow upwards, leads to vigor on places where it isn’t desired. (highest point of the branche=middle of arch and not end of branch)
-this leads to a high need for pruning strong vertical growth. likely summer + winter pruning needed.
-not the most efficient space use. If you think of the shadow this tree has. It is probably donut shaped. (leaves /fruit are in a ring on the outside of the tree, with a hole near the center that is largely leaf-less) And thus it doesn’t catch sunlight near the center of the tree.

Advantages.
-because the “high vigor” zone is at the top of the arching branches and not the end. you lower vigor at the end, usually leading to more small (fruiting) wood at that spot.
-the “fruiting zone” is nice and low on the outside of the tree. Easily reachable.
-it looks very beautiful.

This is just my (relatively informed) opinion not fact. I don’t claim to have more expertise than Paul Gautschi or others.

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