My father in law tried to be helpful and decided to cut the central leader on my 15 year old apple tree (he did this before to my jujubee unasked) today down from about 12 feet to 3 feet. The past few years he would decide to go out there to prune (unasked) by cutting brances towards the top of the tree and declared that the central leader is “dead” despite green bark…
The tree is currently in bloom, with branches that go upwards 3-4 feet from what is left of the tree. Honestly, if he had cut everything back to astump 2 months ago I could have grafted other things on to it, but I’m worried about the tree being able to handle the load of apples on the branches from this years crop.
So looking for advice:
Should I just get rid of the blossoms for this year and cut it back to a stump next year and graft it?
Any chance I can encourage a new central leader to somehow form?
Will it survive if I leave it this way?
A picture might be helpful. From your decription he just created an open vase trained tree for you. You should not need to remove fruit, in fact what is left might just be sweeter and larger than it would have been otherwise.
How big is the diameter of the tree and do you know what variety of apple it is?
Probably not what you want to hear but you need to get to the root of the problem.Try to learn how to communicate with your father in law so you can educate the man. Show him what he did and what you have to go through to correct his actions while involving him in the process.
There are many means of communication without using words but on the other hand, I also understand having a family member that is very hard to communicate with, sometimes seeming impossible. Even if you’re willing to come to the table it still depends on if the other party is willing to join you there and they often choose not to.
None the less, the tree looks alright even if it’s different from what you envisioned and I’m sorry you have a local human going against what you have spent years trying to create.
Possibly your father in law knows what he’s doing and wants to be helpful, you can use google translate to better communicate your ideas. Unless you need a central leader, your open center maybe a lot easier to manage in the future. Just seal up the cut well with pruning sealer or exterior latex paint to prevent water intrusion until the bark grows over the big cut and train your scaffolds to a more lateral growth pattern. I happen to prefer an open center with all my apples within easy reach
Dennis
Kent wa
It’s just an open center now. Does it make sense to grow central leader back?..I don’t know.
I grow some apple trees as open center, you can see couple pics of my producing trees here
If the tree could bear the load of apples before the hacked off bits aren’t going to change that. Unless you tied the branches to the leader with ropes or something, for some reason. If you want to grow a new central leader you’ll have dozens of water spouts to choose from in a month or two and, if not, plenty next year.
