Pruning Delayed
April 3rd, 2015 · No Comments · Posted in farming
A longer, colder than usual winter has consequences. Fruit tree pruning has been delayed at least a month in Upstate New York.
Our friend Gini said she once pruned in snow shoes. I got started a few days ago. It’s still freezing overnight, as low as 10 degrees on March 29.
Our small farm came with an orchard of some 100 trees, mostly apple, some peach and pear. It’s all new to us, and we lost branches off the peach trees the year we moved in because we didn’t know we were supposed to thin the crop. The branches snapped under the weight of all those peaches. But last year with the cold there were no peaches at all. The apple crop has been rather thin, the fruit pretty ugly because we don’t treat for diseases. Our hope one day is to have a pesticide-free orchard, feeding the trees with tons of wood chips.
I don’t know much about pruning except to follow the north country maxim: You know you’ve cut enough when you can throw the family cow through the tree. That means getting rid of any branches that grow toward the middle of the tree, branches that cross other branches, “watershoots” that spring up at a 90-degree angle from branches, and in general anything that impedes air circulation. The aim is a basket shape with branches growing outward from the trunk.
I also lop off anything that grows too high. We want to be able to reach the fruit with having to climb a ladder. As you can see, these trees are pretty young, maybe six years old. In other words, this is a long-term project.
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