Inherited these apples trees with the property, we don’t the varieties but they were super tall and produced tons of fruits most fell to the ground. During the 2022 winter I hired a landscaping company to help prune the tree and reduce the height who pollarded the trees (picture 1).
Last year it didn’t produce any fruits probably because of wierd weather in PNW, but the trees grew back to taller. This year there they have set fruits and tall again (picture 2). I am looking for some advice on how to thing the fruit and prune the tree to get the height in check.
If you want to keep the height in check I recommend just removing the tallest branches each year, but not chopping the whole canopy like the hair cut it recently had. It’s a mistake to cut the whole thing at the desired height because as soon as it starts growing it will be taller than you want again. Instead cut a few of the tallest sections back to shorter than the desired height and leave a portion untouched. Then the next year again cut back a few of the tallest and thin any which are regrowing too crowded where it had been cut the previous year. It’s much better to just do a light maintenance trim each year than a heavy cut further apart in years. If in fact these are columnar types the apples will be born on spurs (short side branches) so make sure not to cut them all off. In the first picture I didn’t see a lot of spurs so I wonder if someone had been removing them for “tidiness”.
Also, I recommend getting a pole picker. Once you have that you’ll care way less about letting these trees have a little more height because you’ll still easily be able to access the fruit.
thanks, here are few pictures on this year’s fruit set. Looks like tip bearing? I am not sure what kind of trees are these. I was told by landscaping company these were columnar.
I have a columnar flowering plum that grows too tall as well. I’ve started summer pruning about 1/3 of the tallest leaders each year - that knocks back some of the vigor versus winter pruning. It keeps it more natural looking and after a 3 year cycle, keeps the heigh in check.
my understanding and experience with columnars is that they generally need a lot less pruning for fruit production than other apples… so you’re maintaining structure, and thinning fruit as needed. best ways to contain trees is not to make dormant season heading cuts (middle of branch)/pollarding, because they stimulate vigorous growth from that site. instead, make thinning cuts (removing tall branches/leaders all the way to larger limb, keeping shorter ones in their stead). summer pruning is also good, but i’d still emphasize thinning over heading, when possible.
