North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>]

Even though the first day of spring only made it up to 31 degrees and 
the low was forecast to be 3 below zero (only got down to +5 though), 
spring pruning season will soon be in full swing.
I have 3 new plum trees that now have 2 season's growth after being 
planted as small trees. It's time to decide how I want to start training 
them. I'm not a total beginner at this. I had a Mt Royal plum for 
several years. I trained it to an open center with 4 major scaffolds. 
Nature kind of decided that for me when it was young. An ice storm bent 
the central leader into a sharp U. It didn't break and I could have 
straightened it back up, I think, but the rest of the tree was about 
right so I took it as a sign to cut it off right there. I also have 
several different American hybrid plums. These are pretty much a thicket 
that I grafted on American Plum shoots that shot up after some 
previously planted trees died off leaving their Prunus americana roots 
to survive.

My new trees are 2 European plums; Opal and Todd, plus an Alderman tree 
which will obviously be very vigorous. These will be yard trees so I 
need to be able to mow under them. I didn't have a lot of spare space 
for more trees so I can't let them spread real wide. The open center Mt 
Royal I spoke of ended up being a very wide tree.

I'm thinking the Opal could be open center since it doesn't seem so 
vigorous and maybe I could control the size. The Todd may have space for 
that too, actually. The Alderman... I've never tried to train an 
American hybrid with an open center and I can't really picture it 
working, knowing the way they grow. What do you think for this one?

I'm just throwing this out, hoping some of you will offer some nuggets 
of advice before I go out there next month and commit to the wrong 
pruning system!

Steve in the Adirondacks (zone 4 on the map, zone 3 in real life)