“Eden is.”
— Joseph Campbell
As you plant your tree and take up your shears, remember these few important things. A fruit tree pruned to a human scale radically simplifies the entire fruit tree project. Fruit trees cycle through a seasonal process of growth, bloom, fruit, and rest, to grow again in spring. Where you time pruning, as this cycle turns, determines how the tree manages the pruning, and with what level of vigor. Be clear about the realities of fruit production. Decide what constitutes “enough.”
A promising new beginning . . .
Fruit trees respond differently to heading and thinning cuts, and these differences have practical applications useful to both you, the pruner, and the tree. Winter reveals a fruit tree’s architecture. Winter pruning corrects and improves that structure. Summer pruning near the solstice keeps fruit trees small. You know to promote good health and how to do it: fruit trees like sun, mulch, and deep, not too frequent water. Fruit thinning is as important as pruning.
Remind yourself that a fruit tree has a great capacity for rejuvenation and forgiveness. Fruit tree trouble is often not so very dire. When issues arise, pay attention. Consider possible causes, and correct them if you can. Watch and wait. Wait and see. Errant paths can take you somewhere interesting. You will have fruit tree disappointments, surely, but nothing that can’t be rectified by waiting a few weeks, until next year, or in a worst-case scenario, by planting a new and different fruit tree — one that works better with your late frosts or spring rains or whatever limiting factors affect your environment. That $12 tree you bought at Costco on a whim and on who-knows-what rootstock might be okay in Indiana or New Mexico. It might not belong where you live.
Yes, it takes a little time for a fruit tree to bear fruit once you plant it. Should that stop you? Of course not. Time passes more quickly than we would like. Remember the woman who wrote to Dear Abby fearing she was too old for a law degree? Abby inquired how old she would be if she didn’t go to law school. Three years isn’t so long, especially if there is fruit at the end of the trail. You don’t plant fruit trees for today, anyway. You plant them for tomorrow. My grandfather moved to a new house and planted new fruit trees when he was 96 years old. Fruit trees are about the future.
Remember what the nursery people say: the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago.
You also know this, or will as soon as you get started: pruning is easy. And satisfying. These four simple pruning rules should provide the guidance you need on the path ahead.
This rule, from a University of California, Davis, Extension seminar on fruit tree pruning, is the best advice I ever heard for stymied and uncertain gardeners on the topic of fruit tree pruning. The implications are obvious: it’s hard to make a mistake, and if you decide you have made a mistake, you can correct it later on. Better to make your best guess than to be so paralyzed by the idea of proper technique that you prune timidly or not at all. Perhaps most important, this advice reflects a trust in the native intelligence of the pruner. We are more capable than we give ourselves credit for.
First, consider the tree. Find a crowded spot with branches bumping into each other. Begin with the obvious. Use thinning cuts to remove the interfering branches to make way for the preferred ones. Remove a branch that crowds other branches. Cut out the branch growing straight up through the center. Remove crossing branches and branches that aim toward the interior of the tree. Remove a branch that shoots straight up. Remove a branch that seems redundant.
Maybe you like the direction of certain branches or their angle a little better than the others, maybe the placement is better, or maybe there is very little difference, but you have to pick something because there are entirely too many. Choose. “Cut some stuff out.”
The zone of equilibrium is the fruit-producing area of the tree, located between the fast-growing upright branches that develop each season and the structural branches that become unfruitful if light is denied them by aggressive branches above. As the tree ages (and as you do), your job is to keep the zone of equilibrium at hand.
Around the time of the summer solstice, prune these upright branches by a half to two-thirds or remove them entirely. If you fail to take down vigorous branches in midsummer, the fruit-bearing zone quickly extends beyond your ability to manage it. Prune at the solstice for size control. Your tree will likely have fruit. Unless harvest is imminent, prune anyway. Upright branches are rarely very fruitful; fruit most often develops on the horizontal branches below.
If a well-pruned tree is beautiful, a beautiful tree is well pruned. Prune in a way that makes the tree shapely and attractive. this rule takes a pruner’s mind off the rightness or wrongness of pruning decisions in favor of something that often comes more naturally: attending to the inherent “treeness” of the tree. Prune to reveal its shape. Pay attention to a tree’s natural growth habits. Subtract the distracting and disoriented. Open up the center. Prune to let sunshine in.
Prune a fruit tree as you would a rose bush: prune to outside buds, the buds that face in an outward direction away from the center of the tree. Make directional decisions by cutting above a leaf node which points in a direction pleasing to you — one that will grow to fill an empty area, for example.
Pruning is more art than science. Anyone who studies what is before her with an eye to improve its good looks will make reasonable pruning choices. One tree can bear as reliably as another, even given radically different pruning choices by individual pruners. A few well-placed aesthetic cuts in January, followed by rigorous scaling back in May or June, keep your tree invigorated, short, well-formed, and fruitful. Remember Steve Detherage’s grandpa (see here): build the tree that’s right for you.
Every experienced pruner knows this: pruning is the best teacher. Ed Laivo tells a wonderful story about sending his ten-year-old son out to prune a Santa Rosa plum tree in the high-density planting orchard at Dave Wilson Nursery. If a ten-year-old boy with little pruning experience could follow a four-page Backyard Orchard Culture handout with success, Ed knew he had a system that would work for almost everybody.
When Joey asked for instructions, Ed said, “You figure it out.”
The boy did. He paid attention. He made decisions. Maybe he made some decisions that a more experienced pruner might not have made, decisions some might call “mistakes.” But I ask you, if the tree doesn’t care, what would constitute a mistake? The boy was uncertain and therefore tentative and careful, but — he had observed his father’s pruning — he knew not to be too careful. Joey did fine. The tree did fine. The next year he did better. Dave Wilson Nursery hired Joey at 14. By 15 he was managing Ed’s research and development programs.
Ed treasures the years he worked with his son as his right-hand man.
Because you planted and tended your little tree, its fruit will always be more than a commodity. This Wednesday and last, I harvested the last of the grapefruit from our tree in Modesto. I share these with my sister. Nearly a month of grapefruit halves for each of us, Marsh whites, generously given from the suburb of our childhood, and from departed parents who, in addition to many tangible and intangible gifts, left grapefruit behind. We love this grapefruit. We make do with the storeboughts most of the year but wait for our homegrowns and treasure each one.
A larger value inherent in the undertaking of growing food extends far beyond edible fruit. Caring for a fruit tree has the capacity to nail you down to your own nature, to pull you into the turn of the seasons, to steal you away from the distractions that so consume us all. A fruit tree invites us to rejoin the circle of life that is built into us, who we are, and where we belong. Even if you haven’t planted your fruit tree yet, you know enough to want to. That alone is a promising beginning.
