Steve Bloom/The Olympian
Master Gardener Keith Underwood grafts an apple tree.

Steve Bloom/The Olympian
Master Gardener Keith Underwood demonstrates pruning techniques.

Precise pruning

Maintaining fruit trees is more art than science

SARAH JACKSON, THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published Saturday, March 9, 2002

OLYMPIA -- Master Gardener Keith Underwood used to tend orchards for a living.

Working as an apple farmer in the Yakima area on 60 acres, Underwood learned the intricacies of fruit trees on the farm he took over from his apple-expert grandfather.

Underwood picked up more than 25 years of experience in pruning, growing, grafting, budding and eating apples up until he sold the enterprise two years ago.

Now on his farm north of Olympia, Underwood has planted a cadre of small fruit trees to complement the two full-grown apple trees already in place.

"It's a hobby now," Underwood said while out pruning and grafting on the grounds of his home orchard last week, "and it's really fun when it's a hobby."

Luckily for South Sound residents, Underwood will go public with his knowledge today in a free, no-registration workshop in Olympia.

Right in the middle of pruning season, Underwood hopes to equip backyard gardeners -- who commonly underprune or overprune -- with better fruit-tree skills.

"These have been pruned by a professional," Underwood jokes about his own shapely trees. "In Eastern Washington, you've got so many people accustomed to pruning this way. You look at some of the fruit trees around here and they really show a lack of maintenance."

So if you've abandoned your fruit trees or if you haven't gotten around to fixing up the trees you acquired with property, it might be time to consider some maintenance.

Now -- while trees are dormant -- is a good time to prune and graft fruit trees.

Gardeners also can start home orchards by planting bare-root fruit trees -- from figs to plums to peaches -- available at nurseries now.

Though the Northwest might not be the best area in the country to raise fruit trees, gardeners can enjoy an edible payoff for their work.

"There are many, many excellent varieties that do well here in the western side of Washington," said Scott Stiles, a horticulturist at Raintree Nursery in Morton. The nursery is offering a full day of fruit-tree classes next Saturday.

Openness

Certainly, weather, pests and diseases can be detrimental to fruit trees and their produce.

But, Underwood said, pruning can decrease the effects of many such tribulations.

"One of the biggest problems that we have in the Pacific Northwest is rain and moisture," Underwood said. "By pruning an apple tree or a fruit tree you are increasing the air flow though the tree, which reduces the potential for fungus problems like apple scab and mildew."

Openness creates a drying effect and also decreases mosses and lichens.

"It won't get rid of it, but by opening it up it's going to reduce it," Underwood said. "It reduces the impact of that growth. All year round you can see through this tree," Underwood said of his Gravenstein apple tree.

While lichens won't hurt a tree, Underwood said high accumulations of Spanish moss, for example, may indicate a lack of air flow.

"When a tree is really dense," Underwood said, "the likelihood of having more of that is higher."

Height

Gardeners should be pruning -- pretty much every year -- for shape and size, too.

Overgrown trees become hard to manage and harvest.

Most fruit trees shouldn't be higher than 10 to 12 feet tall, Underwood said, just low enough to be accessed with a standard ladder.

Underwood, as a rule, prunes 99 percent of the new, straight-up growth on his full-grown fruit trees and leaves wood that forms a 45-degree angle with its branch.

Vertical water sprouts -- long shoots of new growth -- add unnecessary height to the tree and not necessarily more fruit.

Though new growth on some varieties bears the fruit, most apples, apricots, sour cherries, pears and plums produce fruit on long-lived spurs.

"That's the problem with a lot of big trees," Underwood said, "they just keep going up."

Cutting

Depending on the degree of neglect, rehabilitation of an overgrown tree can take from three to more than 10 years of pruning repairs.

That's because -- as with most pruning -- gardeners should never remove more than one-third of a tree at a time.

Underwood recommends restricting growth by cutting back trees to the weakest limb in many places.

So if a branch reaches out but also has a twiggy side branch, cut the branch to direct the growth into that smaller branch.

"It sends energy to other limbs," Underwood said.

Underwood also cuts branches growing toward the center of the tree as well as diseased or damaged wood, which gardeners can remove at any time of the year, preferably immediately.

Gardeners pruning fruit trees also should be mindful of access to the tree -- for future pruning and picking.

"One of the goals in pruning an apple tree," Underwood said, "is having a lane to work through."

By cutting limbs accordingly, gardeners can create walkways that run toward the tree trunk.

Stiles, with Raintree Nursery, said lanes also keep the tree from getting tangled.

"You want to have your branches distributed evenly around the tree in such a way that they don't cross one another," Stiles said.

Education

Gardeners should take care not to overdo it with their fruit tree pruning.

Some gardeners cut back almost all the small growth, leaving stubby, sad trees -- which Underwood sees often around South Sound.

Overpruning, Underwood said, can cause the tree to enter a vegetative, unfruitful cycle.

Diane Skov, a Master Gardener in Olympia, said pruning invigorates -- but also stresses -- trees.

Inexperienced gardeners shouldn't enter pruning lightly.

Topping or "heading" trees randomly for shape can devastate a tree.

Head cuts reduce a tree's food-making ability and leave it susceptible to insects and disease -- problems sometimes undetectable until five, even 10 years after the cuts.

Gardeners should make cuts near -- but not touching -- the "branch collar" -- the slightly raised ring where the limbs attach to the tree. Branch collar cells, like cells around a human scar, allow the cut to heal.

"When people move into a new place, you can't just begin cutting off limbs," Skov said. "Educate yourself before you start. It takes a long time to see the effects of what you've done."

Sarah Jackson writes for The Olympian and can be reached at 360-704-6871 or sajackso@olympia.gannett.com.

Resources

- Pruning Fruit Trees: www.coronaclipper.com/fruit_trees.htm.

- Bud Grafting: www.hgtv.com/HGTV/project/0,1158,GALA_project_11790,FF.html.

- Raintree Nursery: www.raintreenursery.com.

- National Arbor Day Foundation: www.arborday.org.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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