This past weekend I made it up to the orchard after being away for two weeks.
One theory for letting the broken branch hang was to sap the the energy of the tree in trying to feed the hanger. What I had found in the past that if I prune with a clean cut, the tree starts sending up new vertical growth from the neat cut. Hopefully, with the hanger-on there will be less new shoot growth to replace the hanging shoot.
This is an especially interesting test this year. As you can imagine, with my stone trees having ZERO fruit to energize, they had explosive growth. What I did was to “break and hang” all shoot growth on the right side espalier arms and pruning off with nice clean cuts on the left side. I will have a literal “side by side” comparison study to report on later in the year; first to see if it inhibited the growth and second if it led to more spur development.
The first dozen “crunchie snapping” sounds were very difficult to bear. But then I “evolved” my thinking, adjusted and stopped worrying about the plant abuse police.
Mike