I went out today to see if I will be able to start pruning on apple trees with all the snow on the ground. To my surprise I found both of my B9 trees with low branches already “pruned” somewhat too aggressive to my taste, though it made a clean job. The low branches ended up to be just a skeleton with couple spurs, all new growth is trimmed. I am debating, should I keep the branches and make a fence around for next year or just cut them off. Considering it is B9, I do not expect the threes just compensate a loss of low branches. From other point, those branches are really low, like 1.5’ from the ground and require support not to lay on the ground when apples grow on them. Both trees are young trees. Any suggestions?
I think you will continually have issues with branches that are only 18" off the ground. If they dont work their way up, they will be food for deer, mice, rabbits and a host of other animals and insects.
Id suggest trimming them off and keeping branching just a bit higher, to keep rabbits from gnawing them during the year.
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You are so lucky they haven’t worked on the trunks yet. In the past, on snow years I’ve had bearing age trees completely girdled for the first 5’ of trunk by rabbits. Keep your eyes out for their turds which show up on snow very clearly. On bad years the turds are everywhere but you can find the rabbits by tracking them to there nests. Chances are you can roust them out and shoot them with some stomping.
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I know where it lives, under my shed. My dogs are trying to get him, but no luck. I use metal net on the trunk, and to make it even less appealing to go close to the trunk I use old bird netting - the plastic one, that clings to everything to stuff the gap between the trunk and the metal mesh. It sticks out of there in all direction and I guess scares him…
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Come spring, there will be more
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But they do the worst damage to fruit trees in winter- there’s plenty of flowers, vegetables and other succulent vegetation in spring.
Here their populations tend to boom and crash even more than with squirrels.
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Keep the rabbit and out him on the payroll😂
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We had a squirrel population crash the day before. They thought it was a good idea to eat walnuts in low branches, I thought they were easy targets for a .22, Perfect!
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Prune the limbs off and wrap 4’ high chicken wire around the trunk. Menards sells it, so do Lowes.
Trunk already wrapped, since fall, but thanks!
I had a short section of high density, trellised apples that I was trialing for an experiment a few years ago. Had a blizzard and the snow got up to 3’ deep in that tree row from drifting. Rabbits didnt take long to find the trees, I spent the better part of the day trying to shovel enough snow away from the trees to get back down to the wire screen protectors that covered the lowest 18" of the trunks. They did plenty of damage in a night or two.
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You need to be careful around your “rabbits.” Some of the larger black ones actually do nest in trees.
Eoghankerrigan. Illustration. Black Phooka. 7 Jan. 2010. DeviantArt. Blog. 20 Feb. 2021 <https://www.deviantart.com/eoghankerrigan/art/Black-Phooka-149481298>.
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Oh, boy… I thought it is strange my dos can’t get him… Now I know why - he hides in the tree 