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["Mark & Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>]

Great post Bill.  I can sympathize with just about every point (nodding my
head as I read your post).  It will be interesting to hear from others, but
here are some thoughts.

I've not had good luck tying branches horizontal.  I know some people on the
list have made it work, but for me,it gives too many waterspouts, as you
describe.  Also when the branches start to fruit they pull the scaffolds
down quite a bit more, lower than you originally tied them.  For these
reasons, I've read not to pull branches down more than about 45-60 degrees
(or something close to that).

In general, if the trees are already too bushy, I would make thinning cuts,
not heading cuts which will add more bushiness.  If new shoots emerge where
the old ones were cut (which will invariably happen) I would just keep
rubbing off the new buds where you don't want them.

I've had the most difficult time pruning peach trees.  My first peach tree
(grown up now) I positively butchered.  What made it doubly bad is that I
didn't realize peach trees (for the most part) won't grow new buds on blind
wood.  Plums, pears, and even apples, if you cut too much wood off, will
just send up more shoots on the blind wood.  Not so peaches.  So
unforgiving.  So my butchered tree, which was the occasion for plenty of
teasing/heckling by my wife and children, is destined to look handicapped
all its days.

What helped me quite a bit, was when I visited a peach orchard at pruning
time.  Cutting to an outside growing bud/shoot will eventually cause the
tree to spread naturally.  Their peach trees were beautiful and they don't
do any limb training.  I still do a little limb training, for instance last
year because there was no fruit, I was afraid some peach scaffolds on some
young trees would go too vertical if I didn't weigh them down, so I used pop
cans filled with water to pull them down some.  I have a few cans on trees
this year.

One other thing I've learned is to try to pick the smaller diameter shoots
for scaffolds.  When I first read about this technique, I thought, baloney.
But now, when I put in a new tree, the first thing I do is take off the
large diameter shoots if I can.  It's too hard to control their vigor.  I'm
still struggling to find the balance between the right amount of wood in the
center of the peach tree (not too much to shade out the wood below, and not
too little and develop lots of blind wood) but I think I'm starting to
understand their psychology.  Sometimes I wonder why these peaches can't
behave, and act like other trees.

Mark
KS




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William C. Garthright"
To: "NAFEX List" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 6:58 PM
Subject: [NAFEX] Summer Pruning


> I've read about summer pruning, but IMHO, it sounds easier that it is.
> I'm trying to keep my trees small, and they're trying to grow as big as
> possible. So far, they seem to be winning. But maybe I can get some
> advice here...
>
> This year, I tied down the branches of my fruit trees so that they're
> closer to horizontal (not completely, but not too far off, especially on
> the apricot). I was hoping to slow their growth a bit. That might be
> working, but they're also sprouting out a lot of shoots along the
> branches, shoots that want to go straight up. These vary from being
> about 10-12" apart on my apricot tree, to a solid mass of shoots on my
> Toka plum (one of the most vigorous trees I've ever seen).
>
> Let's start with the apricot. Should I remove these vertical shoots, or
> just cut them back? The tree has been pretty vigorous, but I think that
> tying the branches down slowed it up a bunch. Really, they're almost
> completely horizontal at the ends, so the vertical shoots are no
> surprise at all. (It's a really nice looking tree, and even set a few
> apricots, despite the cold weather and the shortage of bees.) The
> instructions I've read about summer pruning says to cut the new growth
> back by 1/3, I think, but when I tried that on the plum last year...
>
> OK, let's talk about the plum. I hadn't tied down the branches last year
> (just used limb spreaders to get a good crotch angle), so every branch -
> and there were LOTS of them - started growing straight up, just past the
> limb spreader. When I tried to do summer pruning, and cut the growth
> back, I got a mass of sprouts just below the cut, all of which grew like
> crazy (straight up). It was such a huge weight that many of the branches
> couldn't even hold it up. Needless to say, it was a mess. (I don't
> expect the apricot to be quite that bad, but I'll still get multiple
> sprouts from every one I cut back, won't I?)
>
> As I say, I tied down the branches on the plum this year, as best I
> could (not nearly as horizontal as the apricot, though). Still, every
> inch of the tree seems to want to produce a new shoot, and they're all
> just as determined to grow vertically. Should I remove a bunch of these
> shoots this summer? Just cut them off at the base? I'm really lost here.
>
> I'd hoped that I'd get a big crop of plums, to keep the vigor down a
> bit. But the Toka plum - my most vigorous plum (planted two years ago) -
> had relatively few blossoms this spring and set almost no fruit. But the
> one-year-old Superior plum planted right next to it (to replace one that
> died) was a solid mass of blossoms - and set so much fruit that I had to
> thin like crazy (and I still have to tie the branches UP, not down).
> Wouldn't you know? None of my four plums are dwarves (which I couldn't
> find). I foolishly believed the propaganda that I could keep a tree any
> size I wanted with summer pruning (and I thought plums were naturally
> 'small,' anyway).
>
> This is getting too long already. Sorry about that! I'll just mention
> the peaches. They've become too bushy because of the oriental fruit
> moths, but I'm working on that. They seem to be more vigorous than the
> apricot, but less than the plums (not much less, though). However, I
> don't know what they'd be like without constant OFM attacks on the ends
> of each twig (I'm hoping to find out this year). Also, three of the four
> set quite a bit of fruit (enough to require significant thinning) this
> year, so that might slow them down.
>
> I'd be grateful for some advice here. How do you do summer pruning? (And
> if you cut the shoots back, how do you deal with the mass of sprouts
> that result?)
>
> Thanks much,
>
> Bill
> Lincoln, NE (zone 5)
>
> -- 
> Science is the only true guide in life. - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
>
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