This apple tree came with my “new” house. The foreground large limb appears to be entirely dead. The large limb in the background appears to be healthy enough. Another large limb was removed. The healthy branch is growing much too high, and over the neighbor’s fence, so it’s not of much use. Would you think that this tree could be induced to grow some new shoots either further down the healthy branch or off the trunk (setting the stage to later remove the too-tall stuff)? Or grafting new branches down lower? The trunk is so mature and the bark so cracked and stuff that grafting does not look promising, but I’m not experienced with this. Happy to post some additional more detailed photos if that would be helpful.
I think this would be helpful. It’s a plum in the video, but I believe it would work for a apple or pear as well.
Maybe try a rind graft? I’m not great at grafting, but there are plenty of people on here that are. Hopefully they’ll chime in.
There is much excitement to be had with “renewing” an established tree, but the truth is that by the time You make any sort of progress you would have already been well on your way to having a beautiful and productive tree had you just planted a new one.
A new tree can be trained and coaxed to grow into a form that you enjoy, but also one of a kind because YOU nurtured it. The very beginning of my tree journey was much like the situation you are in. I moved into my place almost a decade ago and it came with a very mature crabapple. I wanted so badly to bring it back to health but it kept dying back and I had to remove many large limbs. I got it to put on a great show one spring and then half of the tree suddenly died. I cut it down and planted a very small Japanese flowering cherry. Here she is seven years later. I’m so glad I planted this tree as it spurred a passion to plant over 60 more trees since.
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That is good advice and I will take it to heart. I guess the reasons that I would have for trying to renovate the existing tree rather than remove and replace are that maybe I could continue to get fruit off the tree even while renovating it, and it would be a huge PITA to remove enough of the extensive roots so that I’d be able to plant a new tree. But I could easily be convinced that there’s really no hope for much of a renovation and that replacement is the only sensible thing.
The fact that I can see so many areas where large branches have been removed tells the story well enough for me. If there was a chance to rehab the tree it is long passed in my opinion. Regrowth would have already occurred at these points where limbs have been cut if it was going to occur. Also the large sloping cut where it looks like half of the tree was removed is a big reason I would remove it. That’s never going to look better or grow back and will likely begin to rot.
As far as getting fruit while the renovation is in progress, I think is a pipe dream. A tree has finite resources. They generally will fall into a habit of either vegetative growth or fruiting, the latter behavior taking a tremendous amount of energy from the tree. You could potentially prune the upper limbs for production and expect a fair crop, but I think that may even exhaust the tree and lead to its demise anyway.
When I removed my crabapple I had the stump ground two feet down and did not really deal with the roots. When I planted the Japanese Cherry I simply dug a few feet over and removed roots that were in the way. I believe this is probably the best solution for you.
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