The bulk of the commercial apple growing in Oregon is east on the other side of Mt. Hood, where winters are much colder and the summer a bit drier yet.

MDV / Oregon

and welcome. It’s interesting to hear about fruit tree pruning on the opposite side of the country, where conditions are very different even if the trees are the same. Maine, France, Oregon…

Guess the takeaway may be that just about anything works, as long as you keep ‘em under control and don’t cut off all the fruiting wood!

Yes, trees are my work. I’m using the website box for your blog. My name is linked if you mouse-over it and click.

Not much more to offer about pear and plum, except I prune those too from late autumn to winter. With those two, like apple, I don’t remove every sprout anymore. Just my style, but it works. I remove 3/4 of the largest sprouts, and leave the smallest 1/4. After the growth season, those then become the biggest, and a new 1/4 will be left. I like the more feathery natural look. And in the long-run, the tree seems to come out about the same by September’s end.

Also, I spend quite a bit of time looking for water sprouts to train into fruit spurs, rather than leaving it all up to random chance. There is a tree care photos album at my site, showing a before and after on a fruit spur, labeled to show where the cuts were made.

Autumn is here, and I’m loving it. My favorite season, and favorite weather to work in, and hike in.

Cheers,

MDV
Oregon

and thanks for your take on things – both the wisdom of autumn pruning AND, very importantly, the art part.

I’m beginning to think (fear) every tree has different needs, and now that the weather is so unpredictable that’s another factor to consider.

You don’t say you’re a professional tree person, but it sure sounds like you’ve done a lot of pruning. Any advice for us on plums and pears?

One older lady never let me do it earlier than January. Then 4 years later, she said she read something similar to my plan to prune earlier. So we did it late November, and she got just as many apples.

I don’t prune the major pruning in summer, as it can expose bark to a bit of sunburn, not allowing acclimating like cool season pruning.

But I thin a second time in summer, about 5 to 10 percent.

Pruning apple trees is sort of an art, probably one of the most challenging things to learn, if the tree is to remain in contol, and evolve over the decades.

Cheers,

M. D. Vaden
Oregon