Efforts in Pruning

Your fruit tree orchard is a wonderful site when they are in full bloom, and waiting for the fruit of the summer is an excitement that cannot be compared. If you are pruning older fruit trees, trying to bring them back to life and make them healthy after a few years of neglect you will find that the process can be difficult but not an impossible task.

If you have recently decided to take interest in old fruit trees in you area, or if you have bought a home that has some older neglected fruit trees you will need to determine which trees are first worth pruning and saving. Often the neglected fruit trees are so over grown that it will take years to bring them back to what they once were. Fruit trees can be put under heavy stress is you were to prune them back heavily during that first pruning session. Your best bet is to cut back only a few the first years, and allow the tree to adjust from that.

Cut back the oldest looking and deadest looking limbs first. Not cutting any branches that have too many leaves on them will be a good mental note. If there are suckers growing at the base of the tree, be sure to cut these suckers off, saving the energy for the base of the tree itself.

You most likely are going to find many branches that will be rubbing together and these are the branches that you should be selective in pruning for the first session. Later in the year towards fall, you can cut additional branches if they are still rubbing.

Be careful not to cut any bark in any location where you consider the tree to still be alive as the bark is a protector of the entire tree itself. Never climb up in the older fruit trees, as often you cannot tell if bugs or pests have hollowed out the branch or limb.

After three years of lightly pruning the older fruit trees, you can start in the fourth year pruning the fruit tree for shape and building of fruit branches.

For your pear trees, start by thinning out some of the deadest and thickest areas of the tree, allowing sunlight to hit the branches as much as possible. The cuts you need to make on any living branches should be made from on the outside so that the tree will continue to grow outwards. Continuous heavy pruning is not needed on the pear tree, just a good thinning of excessive branches will be great. Plum trees are often handled in this same manner, thinning out the numerous branches so that the branches that are left can product healthy fruit.