2-5-2019: The orchard is almost always in need of one thing or another: fertilizer, weeding, oil spray, bird distraction, netting, picking, checking and/or treating for blight or other diseases, and pruning. Late winter is the time to prune.
Last year we had a bumper crop of fruit. It took me 2 solid months to get it all canned. But we left fruit on the top branches of the Big apple tree and the tallest pear tree. These are two of the original trees in the orchard that have made it through snap freezes, irrigation failures and rabbit feasting. They have both been pruned back once before, and then there was an attack of fire blight. After pruning out the blighted branches I left the trees to recover. That was 2016. Then they put on quite a bit of height and fruited in 2018. Time for another hard prune.
A hard prune on a fruit tree means it probably won’t yield fruit again for 2 – 3 years. It’s a sacrifice that needs to be made for the health of the tree, and to keep it from getting so tall that it can’t be fully harvested. I’m not willing to drag out a ladder any taller than 8 feet. So that means my trees can’t be taller than 12′. So, enough said – before and after pictures!
Pear tree, after pruning (no before pic)