North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[tanis grif <tanisgrif@yahoo.com>]

If you are tired too, tell your father-in-law.  Get him to hire some young 
kid to
continue to prune off the suckers.  (These suckers & knots could have been 
prevented
by summer-pruning, years ago, but probably too late now.  Would be a project, 
to
convert...)  If the kid is interested in orcharding, teach him or her 
grafting; get
the father-in-law involved in a project of grafting the big old trees onto new
rootstocks.  If he sees the benefits of this, he may get the idea himself to 
remove
the old trees.  Everybody wins?

     
--- Thomas Olenio <> wrote:

> 
> Hello.
> 
> My father inlaw has a mix of dwarf and standard sized apple trees.  At age  
> 78 he relented and allowed me to prune the standard trees.  His knees are  
> bad, and he has no business being on a ladder.
> 
> Anyway, many of the standard trees have knots of suckers in their crowns.   
> The knots having formed from years and yeats of sucker pruning.
> 
> Should these knots be sawn off, or just prune the sucker?
> 
> Sawing off the knot will remove the knot and all of last seasons suckers  
> growing from the knot.  However, it is a lot of work to saw them all off.   
> Individual sucker removal is difficult too as the knots make it difficult  
> to get at the base of the suckers.
> 
> Which is the correct approach?
> 
> My approach would be to take down the standards and replace them with  
> dwarfs. but the trees have sentimental value to my father inlaw.
> 
> I tired right now from wrestling with a standard Macintosh that did not  
> bear fruit last year, but put all it's energy into suckers (biennial).   
> Arrrgggh!
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Later,
> Tom
> 



                
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