That's a nice looking tree. However, it does look like you've done a lot of heading cuts. That could explain your lack of bloom, at least to some extent. Others might disagree but that's my take.

I see. As I said, I pruned them radically a year ago spring. Last summer it had 22 apples (after thinning), but I am hoping that next year will be better. The clean up is about to begin. I'm looking into metal borders for the trees, as they will trim out well and look neat. Am tired of messy mulch. Mrs. G

Thanks Fruitnut! Sorry, forgot to just say thanks. Mrs. G

Also, the top of the tree is cut off in the picture. The top of the tree tapers off, it is not blunt cut on top. Mrs. G

I see a tree that is running away, assuming I see in the photo correctly. When it is producing a good crop you are going to be on a ladder.

I knew nothing about that stuff when I planted my first two. So I have been trying to fix them and they are pretty good this year and next year I'll get them current on how I want them. As I see your photo, that branch low and to the right needs tied up, so it grows 45-60 degrees (meaning 45 or closer to the ground then 45). I would manage the bottom branches as if going for an open center. Then I would pick a second layer and treat it the same, but not let it shade out the lower, or the lower will go nowhere. So it may be a major cutback on those. I do mostly late winter pruning, but am eying a few branches for a summer chop. I have branches that I plan to get fruit off of for a couple years, then will eliminate as there is no longer space for all.

One of my trees I cut the central leader out right above a branch, the others still have it. This is because each tree is judged on its own. I have studied a lot on pruning because most of what you see on the web is people who know nothing pretending they do so that they get traffic to their site.

The term I hate in pruning is "be brutal". I suggest the strategy of "be smart". It is really hard to get good pruning info. The Stephen Hayes youtube videos were my first good source.

So while I did not answer your question. My point is to get that tree producing closer to the ground when it is behaving correctly. I assume you plan to live many more years and in those years you will have lots of blooms and apples, and you will want them closer to the ground.

OK, now I have to go play with my boxer puppy

Nothing wrong with ladders.

I try to keep my trees at the point where I can reach the top from the ladder, not the ground.

The goal is as little structural wood as possible to hold as much fruiting wood as needed to fill the tree. Your structure looks good but there isn't enough secondary and tertiary wood- the small fruitful wood.

I agree with fruitnut about the heading cuts, which need to be made to a lateral branch. You should almost never stub cut into one year wood- this stops that wood from developing flowers. Some varieties need uninterrupted growth of small branches for three years before the three year wood in back starts producing flowers, More commonly it is two years.

OMG, what have I done? The restraints are now off of the poor tree. We had a noreaster three weeks ago and it needed support. Pruning is tough for me. Right is always better than guessing. Wish I could have more 'hands on' pruning advice. I've watched the Hayes videos and some are excellent and others just don't make it out to the orchard. Three more trees go in tomorrow. Thanks for the advice, all of you!
CCKW the tree is only 8 feet tall. It isn't going anywhere which is why I have no apples. I agree with fruitnut and h-man. I over pruned, and need tertiary wood. Someone please come to my house and help me! Mrs. G

Mrs. G

Thank goodness apple trees are very forgiving! I have two areas of apple trees, one is my free standing ones that I am always wondering if I pruned correctly. And the ones I planted in my garden as Tall Spindle apple trees, which are very easy to prune. I know it will take me some years to really get pruning to a level where I'm not constantly rethinking what I just cut.

John, thanks goodness for your comments. I really want to do all of this correctly so I listen and research daily. My last three trees go in today (two more apples and one new apricot) and then digging holes is over. I look at each new tree differently now. I must think about my secondary wood for blooming flowers. Funny, I felt so confident with my pruning that I over pruned. At least my trees will have a very strong root system. More apples to look forward to next year. Mrs. G

Well, maybe you did prune off some fruiting wood, but I don't know if that's the total issue.

I put in 4 apple trees for the church I attend. The pastor wanted some apple trees, so I planted some in 2012. I knew the trees would receive little care, so I put in the more disease resistant varieties.

They've been in the ground two years and this year they all bloomed, and all but one have apples (The deer may have eaten off the apple clusters on the one tree with no fruit.) I prune these like my peaches - low. The deer prune them too.

Following are some pics I took today:

Winecrisp on EMLA7

Closeup

Here's a Freedom on EMLA 7. Like the Winecrisp, it had 6 or 7 apples on it.

Here's a Liberty on MM111. It had quite a few apples. I don't like the taste of Liberty, but the apples are easy to grow, which is probably the most important criteria for non-managed apples. Someone had recently taken a gouge out of the trunk bark recently on this tree.

Here's a closeup of the Liberty. Enterprise (not pictured) was the one which bloomed but didn't have any apples on it.

Some apples just take longer than others. I have a Sweet Sixteen in my yard (in a bad spot). It was planted around 2008, I'm thinking, and this is the first year it has apples.

olpea - what was your thinking in deciding to prune them so low, taking out the leader? That's how I do my stone fruit, but I don't often see apples done that way.

That's true ltilton. I don't think apples are recommended to be pruned to an open vase, but that's how I do them.

My thinking is that it's easier to keep them low that way. I know you don't mind ladders, but I like my feet on the ground. I'm almost 50 and feeling more breakable every day.

I have a Fuji that's getting pretty good sized on standard roots. It looks funny pruned low like a peach.

I've slowly gotten my pears down low. That's the hardest. They want to grow straight up.

I've decided to try to even train an persimmon to a pedestrian. I don't know if it will work or not. They grow as tall as shade trees.

Mrs. G. I've just emailed you guidelines I use.

As the article states, the easiest way for a beginner to prune varieties into the earliest bearing shape is to remove all branches more than a third the diameter of the trunk at the point of attachment to the trunk and leave everything else. Do not worry about shape or height until the tree comes into fairly heavy bearing. At this point you can easily shape the tree any way you want for high quality fruit and the height you desire because once the tree is bearing well it is much easier to control.

This method works quite well for at least 90% of the varieties I work with. If you know the variety is not vigorous and highly precocious you can leave branches with somewhat larger relative diameter- say up to a half of the diameter of the trunk.

Thanks for the email H-man, and thanks for the pics Olpea. Will I ever understand pruning? Between reading directions, with no 'hands on' experience, it is like learning to knit over the phone. This is a tough one. But. . . thanks so much for all of your help. Mrs. G

Mrs. G,

Some wise mentor on this forum--it may have been you--told me that there is no such thing as a "last tree" once you are hooked. I am up to17. LOL

Brian

Olpea, you seem to have broken about every rule for pruning apple trees that have ever read, but I like the idea and want to keep my trees low as well. Seems like your trees will keep trying to grow a central leader, how do you plan to deal with that? Prune it off during the summer every year?

Oplea went for a total vase with is morethen i was suggesting, but I like his much better then the direction Mrs G's is heading. If a tree keeps trying to push a leader or 10 of them, it is not hard to stay ahead of that. I have looked at a lot of trees in a lot of orchards trying to get my mind around proper pruning. I think the Olpea trees will do quit well for the pastor, with the deer as a wild card on the negative side

Mrs G you said your tree is 8'. In it's current state it is going to be very tall before being generous with apples.

On my too tall tree I got rid of height at secondary branches that were lower down and growing outwards. That tree is going to need thinned heavily and 90% of the fruit can be reached from the ground.

Olpea, your lovely small trees look like children compared to mine. Yikes! And. . . they are covered with apples. Geesh.

cckw, I've had three years of apples from the tree already. I think I will get apples again next year. My first year of apples was huge after thinning and after removing tons of blossoms. I'm sorry to hear that it might be a while before my tree will fruit. I don't want a 20' tree. Mrs. G

"Seems like your trees will keep trying to grow a central leader, how do you plan to deal with that? Prune it off during the summer every year?"

Chris,

I prune all my trees that way. They do send up water spouts (all of them), but I prune off the water spouts. It's more pruning than most people probably have to do, but it doesn't take long. I can go through with loppers and summer prune the water spouts off in about 5 min. per tree.

I don't really keep track how often I have to do it. Just when I happen to see some trees need it, I cut out the vertical growth.

I hope I don't come across as trying to advocate my way of tree pruning for apples. I just posted the pics to show that maybe pruning isn't the whole answer to Mrs. G's Pristine apple fruiting issue, since the trees above are pruned more aggressively by me (and the deer) than Mrs. G's tree.

Deer around here would totally destroy those apples of olpea. And I think they would most places with deer. Also training apple branches out flat like that causes the strong water sprouts. Those will be a never ending issue unless some can be trained over enough to sap their apical dominance. I don't see that as a good training system for apples. It's certainly not for a commercial grower. Modern apple growing systems partition 70% of dry matter to fruit. They do that by growing as little wood and roots as possible which minimizes pruning and maximizes fruit yield. Dwarfing rootstocks make the 70% possible but it still takes the right training system. Think training not pruning.

Peaches grow way more wood than efficient apple systems. That's because the best peaches are on strong wood. But I would think that even on peaches it would be good to grow as much fruit and as little wood as possible consistent with quality fruit. Just my opinion feel free to disagree.

Olpea, various varieties of apples react much differently to various pruning and training systems, unlike peaches. It is this wide range of bearing habits that make them interesting and defy a simple explanation of how to prune them.

FN, I have read years ago in Good Fruit Magazine of Fuji orchards in Japan on old trees with seedling rootstock that get yields comparable to the most productive modern orchards on dwarfing rootstocks- big fruit of the highest quality.

The problem (virtue for me) of such trees is that they require much more time and skill to manage than apples on dwarfing rootstock.

" It's certainly not for a commercial grower. Modern apple growing systems partition 70% of dry matter to fruit. They do that by growing as little wood and roots as possible which minimizes pruning and maximizes fruit yield."

Fruitnut,

I've never tried to chase yield. I like a system of free standing trees (able to withstand our strong winds) without having to thin, prune or harvest on a ladder, while allowing plenty of sunlight through the canopy. Training my trees to an open vase does that for me.

It's true they grow water spouts, but I've not been able to discern apples, plums or pears trained to an open center take any more pruning time, or need to be pruned any more often than my peaches. And as I mentioned, because the trees are such a comfortable height, I can remove any water spouts fairly quickly.

Again, I'm not recommending any particular pruning method, but this system seems to work for me.

There is no problem at all with training apples as open center trees- it is probably the easiest way to manage them. The point of a central leader tree is to get maximum yields by way of harvesting sun in the most efficient structure possible. If peaches didn't require so much light to maintain fruitful wood they'd be pruned that way commercially also, I think.

The precocity of a tree is a branch by branch issue and cutting out the center will not affect the branches below beyond just providing more light.

Winecrisp is extremely precocious, but Liberty, not so much, for me. I expect the trees were stressed by drought to have fruited so early in life but I'm not in Kansas anymore (I actually lived in Kansas as a very young child).

Drought can work a lot like root pruning if it's not too severe.