Hoping that someone can advise me on pruning and planting fruit trees in my yard. I have bought 3 different types of tree all in pots on dwarfing or semi dwarfing root stock. i will post my questions separately to save confusion Firstly I have 6 one year old apple whips at around 7 ft tall with some feathering and mixed variety. The books say prune them back to knee height after planting out. I plan to use an open center model and the feathering, if it were the right height, appears to have good branch angles and an ok structure. Should I still cut back to knee height or use last years feathers to start the scaffolding at a much higher level?
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It will depend on what you want the final height to be. If you want a lower scaffolding tree, then prune low. If you want a taller tree, leave a couple branches.
If it were mine, I’d top that tree just above the 3rd branch. I like my fist scaffolding branches at about waist height, with the top of my trees at about 8 feet.
I prune mine to an open center as well, i feel like many folks are moving away from the traditional central leader style pruning on apples and pears and making a more wine glass shaped tree.
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I have 4 apple trees in the ground, using “Grow a Little Fruit Tree” pruning techniques. One tree has bloomed and has an apple. That’s after just 2 years in the ground, and I’m in a harsh high desert environment. I plan to keep mine very short–no taller than 4’ (2 are espaliered)–so I am brutal with the pruning right now. I like how everything is responding, and keeping them small = keeping them well maintained. I also have 2 cherry trees which are on dwarfing stock, but are taller. I also keep them well-pruned so they can be covered for frost and bird exclusion. They will be kept no higher than 6’. And I have cherries galore. I’m of the opinion that shorter is better; you can always let them grow later.
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It depends on the size of the tree you want and that has already been mentioned but also if you have any deer pressure. I also bought the “Grow a Little Fruit Tree” book and was excited about keeping my fruit trees small. However, several deer came through my yard and destroyed several trees. So I need to keep my trees above browsing level. I also need to cage them until they get at least 6 feet or above. I am relatively new at this so I am constantly learning. I do admire those that have the ability to keep their trees short and can follow the techniques in the book.
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If you haven’t tried it already, I’d give the “Scarecrow” impulse sprinkler a try. The motion detector can be adjusted and it lets out a few blasts of water from the sprinkler at the culprits. Works for dogs, rabbits, deer, people (um, namely, me when I forget where I moved it to). Here’s a link to Amazon, if it will fly. There are other kinds. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009F1R0GC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I linked to the Orbit, which I now have. They really last many years. You do have to have water supply.
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Thanks. I will look into this.
Dave
My deer got used to the motion detector sprinklers every year after about a month of avoiding … lots of work and money down the drain on that idea. You can still have small trees but need to have the fruits in the 5-8 foot zone.
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I hate deer with the fire of 1,000 suns.
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For me it is “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Deer” (old movie reference there…). They chewed down my hostas this spring… I said to my self, “who wants those old hostas anyway”. Destroyed an apple tree I didn’t protect … “well, I didn’t really want that tree anyway”. It is so much more relaxing this way 
All my trees I care about that are too young have a 6’ high circle of deer fence around them. I bought a 200’ roll of it and cut into 6’ chunks to make circles. It takes me about two minutes to put one up around a tree. Peace of mind for two minutes of work per tree. The main thing I wonder is why I didn’t think of this 20 years ago, I would have a lot more hair left if I did.
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Most of my food plants are fine, (fenced) but I can’t even grow a goddamn hydrangea or azalea.
You have a good straight start, why waste the height? Try notching the tree to get another low branch where you want it. I would search on GrowingFruit and Youtube for SkillCult’s videos on tree pruning and notching. I have never quite liked what the books have said about topping trees, when there is another solution.
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