It is acting like spring around here and the trees are beginning to have some buds swelling - I hadn't tended to it yet, so I went out and lopped all of the suckers I could reach from my italian prune and my smaller gravenstein apple. I'll have to drag a ladder out there to get the rest, and I am cursing the dullness of my loppers. There's a larger apple that I can only partly do myself - I'll probably have to break down and hire it done next year - and two cherries that I am just letting leaf out as I have no interest in their fruit, they serve me better as a leafy shield between my house and the neighbor's windows. My neighbor's pear looks like it's hair was stuck in an electric socket, it has so many suckers on it this year. She has back problems, I know, so I am inclined to maybe offer to come over and whack at it for a while. Any thoughts on pruning your fruit trees, or pruning tales in general?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruning_fruit_trees I really like Wikipedia, you can find info on just about anything there. the only fruit tree I have had was a peach when we bought this house almost 20 years ago, it was really old then. Since Amanda was born 4 months later and I wasn't a gardener until about 5 years ago, the poor tree never was pruned.
We have overgrown apple trees in the back yard. Each year we try to do some pruning on them. Most of what done last year was the low hanging branches that would hit me when I mowed the lawn.
way back when, I used to take the suckers and graft them onto root stock. Worked great to get more trees!
I have a plum thicket down at the end of my lane.I wopnt to cut over half of them down this spring as they have completely tok in my 2 peach trees.I do hope the peach trees are still alive.
