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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[NAFEX] Stardard Apple Pruning,
Thomas Olenio, 03/16/2005