How to prune your fruit trees in your home orchard

Key tips in pruning free trees in your home orchard to sustain healthy and long living fruit trees grown with organic methods
By: www.cityfoodgrowers.com
 
June 4, 2013 - PRLog -- Fruit trees can be a wonderfully productive and beautiful aspect of your organic garden. Pruning your fruit trees is a vital part of maintaining a healthy and productive organic orchard. Pruning will normally increase the yield of your fruit trees. Not all fruit trees require yearly pruning.

This pruning advice is on three common fruit tree crops. Pruning methods, as well as extensive content on planting, cultivating and organic treatment of pests and diseases for 60 common fruit tree crops are within our Organic Gardener subscriber web site at www.cityfoodgrowers.com. There is also detailed information on 900 varieties (cultivars) of those fruit trees in the site for a broad diversity of climates and where you can buy them.

For most fruit tree crops, pruning should occur in the time frame between the completion of fruiting and start of new growth, but as with most things in life, there are exceptions. One exception is dealing with suckers that come out of the rootstock. It is better to prune these during flowering and fruiting (generally the summer months). The time of the year for regular pruning depends on:

• your climate,

• whether you are growing early, mid or late cropping varieties,

• whether you grow dwarf varieties

Grapes

Grapes are usually pruned in Winter. Pruning is done to increase your fruit yield. With one year old vines prune off all growth and leave just 1 strong shoot. This one shoot should be cut back to just 2 buds. This will result in a good strong trunk for next season. Spur pruning is where 2 permanent horizontal branches are trained along the trellis wire. Select the most vigorous canes and cut them back to short spurs of 2 buds. The following Spring each of these buds will produce a new cane which will carry many bunches of fruit. Spurs should to be thinned so they are spaced approx 15 - 20cm along the main branches.

The following Winter the top cane growing vertically from the 2-bud spur is cut off. The lower cane is pruned back to 2 buds to create a new spur. Cane Pruning is often done in cooler climates. For Cane Pruning approx 3-4 strong canes growing from the main branches are selected. The thickest 1 or 2 are pruned back to approx 13 buds and tied to the wire. Growers will attach these to the trellis wires by wrapping in the opposite direction. The remaining ones are cut back and used the next year.

Lemons

Prune lemons every year or two, cutting back new growth by about one-quarter to one-third. Otherwise, trees will get too large, and fruit will be hard to pick. Four or five well spaced strong branches should give your tree a good starting shape. Prune out any dead, diseased and criss-crossing branches and prune out inner branches to allow sunlight and air movement to the centre of your tree. Cut back branches that are getting too large or are in the way and easy harvesting.

Lemons, as well as all citrus trees, can tolerate a heavy pruning - especially if you wish to rejuvenate an old tree. Use handheld pruners on small branches; long-handled loppers or a pruning saw on larger ones.

Whenever you have cut branches, my preference is to use biodynamic tree paste which has a wonderful affect on tree health and protects the "open wound" of the tree where you have made the cut. The tree paste can also be placed on the trunk of the tree after pruning. Gardeners use other substances to protect exposed branches. I do not have experience with these so I can't comment too much here on those substances.

Apples

There are normally two goals when pruning an apple tree: (1) Initially on young trees to encourage a strong, solid framework, and (2) On mature trees to maintain shape and encourage fruit production.

Apple trees can reach 6 - 8m in height so pruning will be needed to control their size to make netting and harvesting easier. Apples also grow extremely well as an espalier (along a climbing frame) - this makes pruning and netting very easy. Pruning opens up the centre of the tree to allow maximum air movement. Pruning should be carried out during winter. Once the desired height has been reached, a light summer pruning to maintain this height can occur.

Here is what you should prune: suckers, stubs and broken branches, downward growing branches, rubbing or criss-crossing branches and upward growing interior branches.
End
Source:www.cityfoodgrowers.com
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Tags:Organic Gardening, Vegetable Garden, Urban Agriculture, Food Gardening
Industry:Gardening
Location:Queensland - Australia
Subject:Features
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