I haven’t done any pruning yet; several of my new apple trees grew like in the picture. I’d like an open vase tree which I’ll cut back to 7-8 ft ea winter. I’ve been training some of the lower limbs to horizontal. Trees were planted April of last year.
There are 4-5 limbs about 3 feet off the ground; then no more limbs until the tree gets to 6 feet, where there are 6-7 more limbs.
Where to start?
Thanks,
If you are OK with scaffolds starting where the lower two are cut the trunk off a couple of buds above them leaving one bud in the direction you want your third. For lower scaffolds you can cut the whole tree down to just above the point you want scaffolds.This won’t likely kill a young apple tree, just inspire a sprout riot within a few inches of the cut.
Thanks Alan! That sounds easy enough.
Not sure why you’re leaning towards an open vase shape, with the linear form of your planting bed I think central leader would be easier to manage, especially since it appears your tree naturally lends itself to this form. It is highly productive and will be easier to get to all the limbs.
Your lower branches are OK, I’d pull the upper ones down to just below horizontal. For the rest of the bare trunk, in early April when sap starts to flow, notch the bark above the bud where you want a branch to start and it should sprout one.
I agree with the advantage of a central leader. The disadvantage is it requires more pruning skill to maintain- eventually. The cycling in and out of upper scaffolds is often not managed well by hobbyists and an open center is an easy way to assure good light exposure.
The reason central leader came into favor, I believe, is entirely due to its better economy of space and light. In home orchards this may not be very important.
Most recommendations I’ve read suggest notching a bit later, around bloom, but from experience I think you are right there as well. Even notching when trees are dormant in winter has worked reasonably well for me when I’m not returning to a site until post petal fall.
What root stock is the Enterprise on?
Rootstock is M111.
Thanks for all the info!
That M111 is going to want to put out a ton of wood so you are going to have to prune a lot one way or another to keep it manageable and not interfering with other nearby trees.
I agree; the best strategy is to get it to crop early and heavily to control vigor. Lots of horizontal wood will induce this, vertical growth will get away from you and result in a big tree. The horizontal branches will want to put out a boat load of suckers, pinching them back to three leaves repeatedly will revert them to fruiting spurs and calm the tree down. Cut big branches off at an angle to keep all the branches skinny.
Man that tree looks great Bob. If you do go open vase keep in mind you may need to leave some small stubby growth in the middle to prevent sunscald on the wood. I had that problem when I was in the Austin area. Although I think it only happened after I summer pruned some stuff. It did happen though. Just food for thought.
Drew
This doesn’t pertain to this particular tree because its branching is strangely sparse, but the easiest way to bring most varieties to early fruitfulness is to leave every branch but those that exceed 1/3rd the diameter of the trunk where it meets the trunk. For precocious varieties the ratio can be as high 1/2 diameter, branch to trunk.
Most trees provide a surplus of branches and fill their space and fruit earlier the less they are pruned. Branches with excessive diameter take longer to fruit, however and should be removed promptly.
This method is the no-brainer approach used often by commercial growers back when they had orchards on free standing root stocks and inexpert crews to prune them. Many French growers have historically used this approach where careful pruning begins only when a tree is bearing and has assumed its allotted space. The often repeated and not entirely correct phrase, all pruning is dwarfing comes to mind. The statement is pretty much always true with immature trees.
I believe the tree in the photo is being slowed immensely by its relative dearth of branches. The time to train a tree is often most opportune after the tree begins to fruit.
Your photos are amazingly instructive, BTW. Nice.
Great thread Bawkins! I had the same question about my Fuji.
@applenut- Are the apple varieties that “runt out” from early cropping fairly unusual and low in number? E.g. Liberty I learned the hard way. Yes, neat photo of Dutch Cut. I have also seen photos of Dutch Cut where the cut is horizontal- is slanted better?
The general distribution of leaves vs. bare wood is something I have noticed with my Enterprise. I wonder if it is a variety prone to forming blind wood?
Hambone; yes, you want to take all the latent buds off the top and leave them underneath so the sprout is sure to come from the bottom. If it came from the top it would go straight up.
I’ve tried notching in the fall or even January when I cut scionwood; the darn things heal up by the time they sprout out, and I have to do it again. Maybe they just never go dormant here.
Yes, if the wound heals before they send out new shoots I don’t see how it would work. That was why I figured winter notching would probably work here because the tree wouldn’t get far in healing the wound while fully dormant. I don’t know if it works as well as notching later because notching is not 100% effective whenever one does it- especially on older wood.
I doubt anyone has ever carefully studied it. When I first learned about the procedure it seemed to be pretty obscure info. I read about it in an article in Pomona, probably over 20 years ago. That was where first I read about pruning by ratio as well, in an article written by Bas van dan Ende. He may have also clued me to the scoring to make a new branch technique- I’ve forgotten.
Jon Clements and Wes Autio studied it at UMass Cold Spring Orchard "Using Heading vs. Notching With or Without BA Application to Induce Branching in Non-feathered, First-leaf Apple Trees" by Jon Clements
