I can understand why many dabblers in orcharding don't prune their tree fruits, or prune them very lightly.  Even though I'm starting to build up my confidence after several years of pruning, I'm still a bit daunted when the time comes to take a wheelbarrow load of branches off our biggest peach tree.  She just looks so naked with the watersprouts, crossing branches, and shaded branches removed, like she couldn't possibly put out a bushel of peaches this summer.  And yet, my photographic record from last year shows that she looked just as shorn after being pruned then, and our peach harvest last summer was phenomenal.

I'm almost confident enough about my skills to write a lunchtime series about pruning, but not quite.  Maybe next year.  Especially if I can talk my pear limbs into toeing the line and succumbing to my training job this year rather than making 90 degree turns and growing straight up.

You can read my pruning and training philosophy here.  The only real addition that I made this year was to weigh down the tips of small twigs with clothespins --- this is a quick and easy method of training the tenderest branchlets.  Remember --- the more you can get your trees to do what you want by training instead of pruning, the more energy the tree will have to put into growth and fruit.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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