Hi Mick, I assumed by your zone and photo that you might be a neighbor in northern Wisconsin (I’m in the UP). Yes, as Blueberry said on chainsawing the limb, in pieces. Just leave and not cut into the collar. It’s amazing how well a large cut like that can heal. We’ve done many like that. I learned about sunscald as I guess most of us learn about such stuff - experience. As Alan said though, healthy trees have a great power of overcoming adversity. Though there is a lot of dead sunscalded bark on the top limbs of this particular tree, it grew, and continues to grow, plenty of new shoots to compensate. I just prune off the largest, leave the smallest maybe pull some down horizontal (this is on the top).
It’s nice to give the tree a chance. I’ve had some turn into better fruit, some not. But you can always enjoy the tree no matter the fruit, or cut it down and plant something else. Sue
It’s available, just expensive as a used book. $39 in the link I provided. I have a copy on my shelf I never refer to anymore. For me it’s guidance on old apple reconstruction was the main purpose. Prof. Prokopy of U.Mass provided me with the info I needed for low spray fruit production here in SE NY. I never sought commercial pristine fruit when I started and when a few customers started asking for it from their trees, I developed my own schedule which still required less input than Cornell recommends. Their gurus say if you don’t keep summer fungus from establishing in June you can’t control it, but I don’t do the 2 June sprays and still get pristine. It’s weird how their science shows one thing conclusively and my experience shows something else, even in the wettest of seasons.
For me personally, I would rather adjust the tree in a single year to the shape i want. Reduction of fruit by 80% or so doesn’t seem that bad on a very large mature tree. I guess if you only have 1 or 2 trees bearing fruit it might matter a lot more to you though.
I get the best shape the tree can give me the first year without staggering the tree from realizing the shape I ultimately want.
I have reconstructed well over a thousand such trees over the years, but there’s more than one expert way to skin a cat. Certainly my method works as well as any when working with what are essentially specimen trees on estates that often spend as much as a million dollars a year on landscape work.
What I do see a lot of is badly wounded bark from sun scald because too much was removed at one time. Such damaged major scaffolds can go on for decades seemingly unaffected but are weakened by it and I believe more likely to break in storms.
I believe it is necessary to leave enough leaf buds to create adequate transpirational pull, particularly as trees are starting to leaf out in spring on hot still days. If the sap is moving it doesn’t get so hot and transpiration creates the energy to pull the sap and keep the stream cool enough not to kill cambium cells.
Stumbled upon and reviving this great thread, as I have a similar, but less aggressive, project (How do I train/prune this apple to a weep), where I eventually plan to graft over this not-so-good apple. @alan I am trying to understand a bit more about the sun scalding and progression of removing the vertical uprights and avoiding scalding. Probably 70% of my uprights were removed a year ago and of course last summer a bunch of small ones formed in their place.
Is it a progression of removing up to 80% of the shading limbs each year, until there are none (and the tree adjusts to be OK without shade), or there really always needs to be some (say 20%) verticality for sun protection of the upper trunk in a weeping structure?
I have looked all over to find pictures of what I’m trying to target for a weeping apple, but without success. If you could be talked into sharing a picture or two of what your old apple trees re-worked look like in their final weeping form (or along the way), it would be very, very enlightening!
BTW - found a copy of that book for about $20 on Amazon and snapped it up so I can check out that chapter!
I’m the OP of this thread. It’s one year later, so I thought I’d show results of my original hack job on my first tree, and my second tree pruned following your recommendations to the best of my ability (and some guidance from the recommended “Ecological Fruit Production in the North” book) last year and this Spring.
Looks like a pretty wet spot and may not be worth the effort of improving the tree by restructuring, but maybe you’ve gotten worthwhile fruit from it. The tree does not look particularly vigorous to me, perhaps because of all the surrounding competition but also just the excessive wetness of the soil- can’t tell what going on accurately from here.
Pertaining directly to your question, you can cut the tree safely down to the first crotch with only a strong left sided branch to cut to. During summer and even later spring you can prune new growth to make sure lower wood gets plenty of sun.
The tree is misshapen and leaning left, is this because of encroachment from competing trees. If so, they need to be reigned in and nothing competitive should be allowed to grow higher than grass within 6’ of the trunk, even if it is short growth. Eliminating even grass for at least a 6’ diameter circle at its base will speed the process of renovation.
Thanks @alan ! It’s an old tree about 10 feet from a small river. It has survived being repeatedly flooded every 4-5 years, sometimes underwater for weeks. I think it has survived for 60 years, dating back to when the area was apple orchards before the house was built, but that’s just a guess.
The apples are good for juicing (thick skin, good taste but once the juices are gone, you’re chewing cardboard) but I can’t spray or get to most of them without climbing the tree.
I’ve left it as is for 12 years but rather than cutting it down, figured I could try to get it into some useable shape, both for the fruits or for grafting. I’ll definitely try to clear it out a little more. Thanks for the advice!
You replied to my post in the Canadian Scion Exchange topic but I’m new to this group and can only do 3 replies in a topic. You can email me directly at rreynolds1234 @shaw.ca
I have Golden Delicious Apple, Hardy Nectarine and Angela Cherry
Here’s an up-to-date shot of those same trees from the other end of the drive. Obviously they’re dormant now, but you can see what’s going on that way.
I assume there’ll be a lot of thinning of all those water sprouts. I’d be inclined to try to pull some of those sprouts to the side and horizontal. (Of course, I’d also want to graft to them, and this isn’t that kind of orchard.) The father of the current owner died in 2015 at 96 years; his father, who was born in 1873, planted these trees in 1906. He died in 1943.
The most common mistake with such trees is the removal of water sprouts lower on the trunk. Ultimately, you don’t want bearing branches up in the sky but down where you can reach them without employing more than a short step ladder. Some old trees are not vital enough to send out new wood lower in the trunk, but usually the trees I work on put out ample growth lower in the tree.
During summer you make sure those lower branches get light by removing at least upright shoots high in the tree and you use branch spreaders judiciously to gradually spread your new future canopy. Keep them vertical enough to sustain vigor and use hinges if you need to when they need to be bent more horizontally than they are willing.
Regardless of the utility of lower branches, functioning branches further down the tree strengthens the trunk. Repeated removal of interior wood eventually makes all species of trees excessively lanky and architecturally doomed to toppling.
Where your branches are now should be the focus of gradual removal to bring the trees down in height and create stouter, stronger, more beautiful and productive trees.
