Thanks @alan for the detailed response. I added a pic of the McIntosh above. I honestly don’t think it’s overpruned but that’s just my opinion. It has tons of fruit buds but they just aren’t ready. When it does come into fruiting there will be a lot of fruit.
If I do new Rootstock grafting I think I’m going with an interstem.
That Mac should be loaded with fruit. Is it growing in a very deep, rich soil? It is entirely too brushy and looks way too tall as well. I expect that growth habit on Fuji, but not Mac.
I don’t manage young Macintosh trees but lots of very big old ones. They have a pretty upright growing habit. If I was managing your tree or any excessively vegetative tree at its size and age I would cut off all branches besides my permanent scaffolds and whatever smaller branches connected to the trunk that I could use to tie down secondary wood. I would keep those smaller temporaries from interfering with my permanent structure with frequent spring and summer pruning. Pulling well lit secondary wood to horizontal should make that tree grow up and start bearing it’s responsibilities instead of being stuck in Peter Pansville. Sometimes you have to push them out of their childish ways.
I did an edit that should clarify matters by substituting the word secnodaries, which was wrong with the words smaller temporaries- that is the temporary branches left to serve as anchors for secondary branches connected to the permanent scaffolds to be tied to. They will bear fruit sooner and it won’t matter how vigorous they originally are if they are tied to horizontal during winter pruning after first years growth. Sometimes this is necessary to calm down excessively vigorous apple trees. Also, tying upper tier scaffolds to below horizontal can help a lot.
Bear in mine that fruiting won’t be affected until the following year as flower buds will form the first.
The French Axe method (as I recall it being named) involves tying all growth below horizontal to force early fruiting and keeping trees in a tighter space than their rootstock might otherwise permit.
I like your characterization 
I wanted to point out that there is a large tree just behind the McIntosh which may give a false view of the height. The height line of the fruit tree is just discernable between the two.
I agree it’s too bushy. I have used stretcher bars to try and pull down scaffolds, but I think there are too many scaffolds. I think I need to thin to allow more light in and add more space between them.
I’ve tried to confine my heading cuts on laterals to late summer pruning to decrease growth response. I’ll wait until winter to remove those larger branches back to the trunk.
The Jonathan is very similar in shape. I’m not 100 percent sure but I think this is a photo of Jonathan. It’s deceiving because I can mow under a bit of it. It’s not that low to the ground. Same thing. Very bushy. The bottom whirl of scaffolds have been pulled down, but they are quite upright above that
Thanks for your advice. I will share before and after photos after winter pruning and get some opinions on whether I achieved the desired effect.
What do you use to tie the branches down with? I have to do this to couple of my trees in the spring before blooming.
I still plan on posting some photos of the different M111 rootstock sizes.
This is the product I use if I’m not tying branches with tape or string to other branches or even to the base of the trunk (string) which I often have to do with peaches. V-spreader demonstration | V-Spreader ~ Shaping Your Trees The distributer I get them from is https://peachridge.com/
Sometimes I use hinges made by making cuts with a pruning saw underneath the branch near the trunk so stiff branches will bend instead of breaking. Occasionally I used a sapling with a v-crotch when I’m spreading a branch with over 2" diameter, securing it the tree by wrapping the ends with electric tape, but I will prune hundreds of trees before having to do this once, and I’ve never needed to do this in my own orchard or nursery because I don’t let excessively upright branches get so thick without spreading them.
Some varieties ARE excessively brushy and can delay fruiting by creating too much shade where almost all the light is going to shoots that began in spring. Growth is so rapid that this happens by mid-spring almost no matter how you dormant prune. In my pruning guide I mention this as interfering with the least possible pruning method to bring free-standing trees into production. Such trees may need to be kept open with frequent summer pruning- thinning cuts, not heading cuts. That is cutting wood all the way back to where it’s connected to a larger branch or to the trunk.
It all gets confusing when you learn that one method of getting espaliers to fruit is to cut shoots back several time during the growing season, but this is done with new shoots only on trees that are already very open. Eventually it can force a shoot into being a fruiting spur if you leave a few inches when you prune it back. Flower buds will often form on the part you don’t remove.
Olpea uses stakes as anchors to tie branches down with string. There are many methods you can use. I’ve never heard of anyone using temporary branches to tape secondary branches to, but it’s a method we use almost constantly with young apple trees. It’s almost my signature training method when coaxing vegetative varieties to fruit.
I figured it out when called on to prune a commercial sweet cider orchard with a bunch of N.Spy apples on M7 planted about 8’ apart that weren’t fruiting 10 years after planting. I pulled branches below horizontal as much as possible and the trees became reasonably productive after a couple of years. That was many years ago- I probably should have cut down or transplanted every other tree and then worried about training the remaining trees. .
Here are some photos of the differences between the M111 rootstocks I have. I have photos of the trees in the row so you can see the difference in the height and also the truck thickness. These trees were all planted in 2013 and 2014. So basically have been in the ground for about 10 years. The 5" rootstcok is the Northern Spy which is about 16’ high. The rest are a lot shorter- maybe 7’ or 8’ high. The size difference is quite shocking knowing they are all on M111 rootstocks. That is why I was asking anyone here if they had seen this before.
I don’t think it would make much difference. Shigo might disagree with me because trees are currently beginning to devote energy to hardening off, perhaps, but there are commercial growers in the Hudson Valley who have their picking crews do annual pruning immediately following harvest.
Removal now would help bring light to useful branches in the tree while they are still gathering energy, which they will for as long as they have ample green leaves. In fact the temps in VA right now may be perfect for max photosynthesis for apples. Apples thrive in fairly cool weather. .
Thanks! Good news for me! I’m itching to open up those trees.
I very recently visited nearby orchards in VA. The leaves looked impossibly pristine. I assume it must have been sprayed regularly with fungicides and insecticides to look so nice. My trees are not sprayed and the leaves looked more similar to the one @MikeC just posted. It makes me question whether some trees are small because they are defoliating earlier due to more susceptibility to disease.
If I did not spray, I would have very little salvageable fruit. I do think I will do more bagging, but I like to see fruit also. I think a combination is good for me.
I had no fireblight at all compared to last year where I lost some significant limbs and grafts. Although perhaps controversial, I used streptomycin and I suspect it made the difference.
I timed early sprays better and had relatively little scab and car, but saw a lot of rot later. Also sooty blotch and fly speck have moved in.
I’ll try spraying fungicide next year.
I always spray my trees all season long. I used a new spray this year but it wasn’t a good spray choice. Our weather is such that we started losing leaves the last few weeks on all our trees, fruit and non fruit. The cottonwoods usually start earlier. So my trees leaf loss is normal for the weather and also lack of rain over the last two months.
Generally, I’d say “ditto”.
But I do have some trees
that have retained foliage nicely, even some tender growth on ends of some limbs on some trees.
I suspect cedar apple rust has something to do, in addition to lack of rain, with so many losing leaves.
Young grafts losing leaves worries me I’m losing some…but most probably are just in early hibernation.
In my own orchard the soil conditions change with alarming regularity.
I have a small area (15’ x 70’) where peach trees struggled for 10 years until 2 solid years of lime application + N application are helping the trees catch up to the row immediately to the left.
The row immediately to the left?
Complete 180. Small amounts of lime have caused those trees to take off.
I also have rows 250 feet long of single varieties…and often multiple rows of the same variety… for me it’s relatively easy how field conditions change because I often grow 50 to 100 trees of the same variety.
And, don’t forget, a bulldozer has been involved scraping topsoil and depositing it…on many a property.
Bulldozers. And human interventions of various sorts.
The area where my orchard is was clear cut probably at least twice…the property outside of my orchard’s pretty heavily wooded and doesn’t have a single tree that predates the middle of the 20th century…I can just imagine the topsoil loss that came from clearcutting, even though it was decades ago.
Sounds like it may be a few different things here at play. The first question is do you have a strict spray regimen with commercial sprays or do you just leave the trees to themselves? Depending on the quality of the scion wood that the nursery used could be part of the problem too. There could be a latent virus in the wood that’s causing the runting. The trees need spraying to ward off diseases, viral, bacterial, and fungal. If the tree is fighting any of these attacks then the tree’s energy will be used to survive this instead of growing new wood or fruit. The other issue as someone pointed out may be the way you’re pruning. I’ve gotten away from winter pruning. The old rule of thumb was winter pruning for growing wood and summer prune to grow fruit. Now I just push the trees in the spring with calcium nitrate fertilizer and they push really good growth but also fruit buds. Then I summer prune once fireblight is no longer a major threat. I too am growing mostly older heirloom varietals and they’re difficult to grow. Rootstock comparability is a real thing too. I’m using G969 and G935 and some varieties don’t like it at all and have bud/graft union weakness issues. My trees are doing great but if I were to do it over again I’d probably put them all on M26. It could be one, or a combination of all these things, but it sounds like latent viruses could be an issue. Unless you source your trees from a highly reputable nursery, like either Wafler, Cummins, or starks bros. , you never know what you’re getting.
It’s a good point, my orchard area was definitely touched in the past by machinery to support roads. It could be the reason I see heavy clay in odd spots.
