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  • From: "Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] fall pruning
  • Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:06:40 -0400

Alex Shigo always suggested fall to be the worst time to prune based on speed of wound healing.  However I have often heard of commercial apple growers using the same crew that harvested their apples to prune them immediately after harvest.  Shigo's research only followed the time for wounds to heal not relative disease problems at wound sites.  I've seen research that suggests that fall pruning causes no harm in the long term, at least with apple trees.
 
For apple trees the concern about wounds before extreme cold weather usually is about trees that have been pruned in the previous 2 weeks of -20 F cold or colder, which is something I have done with no consequence on old apple trees.  Young trees are more susceptible to shakes and other cold injury from pruning I'm told and have read, so I usually wait until late winter to prune these.
 
Because snow load is a frequent cause of injury for native trees, especially from early snow when there are still some leaves, I tend to trust a native trees ability to deal with injuries to the trunk at any time as I've seen many species recover very well from terrible wounds with a lot of torn bark from these kinds of injuries.
 
I wouldn't be very concerned about health consequences of pruning a persimmon in the fall but if it was quite young I wouldn't prune it if there was a chance of extreme cold shortly after just to be safe.
 
Alan Haigh, the Home Orchard Co.


  • [NAFEX] fall pruning, Alan Haigh, 10/20/2008

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