Southwick - Maintaining Your Dwarf Fruit Orchard: Storeys Country Wisdom Bulletin A-134

by The Editors of Storey Publishing

There are deep satisfactions to raising dwarf fruit trees. The bright array of blossoms in the spring, the promise of the growing fruit in the summer, and that first bite into your own fruit on a crisp fall day all make the growing of dwarf fruit trees worth while. This bulletin tells you how to care for existing trees, while its companion bulletin, Planning & Planting Your Dwarf Fruit Orchard (A-133), covers the basics of starting a home orchard.

So now you have an orchard. Whether youve just finished planting or purchased land with an existing orchard, your trees will need some attention if they are going to produce a satisfying harvest. Your primary tasks will include pruning undesirable growth, fertilizing and cultivating the soil, checking pest and disease problems, thinning excess fruit, and harvesting your rewards.

An existing stand of trees will save you much of the time, money, and effort of establishing new ones, but you will have to decide if the old ones are worth saving. If the orchard has been maintained carefully in the past, you may have an easy time getting your first harvest. On the other hand, a lot can happen to trees in a neglected orchard. You should consider the health and form of individual trees as well as the overall planting layout.

Older trees that have obviously suffered the ravages of animals, pests, disease, and weather are likely to produce inferior fruit. Unless such trees are exceptionally picturesque and you are more interested in aesthetics than harvests, you will probably be better off turning these into firewood and starting over.

Most fruit trees are the product of different varieties grafted together so that desirable fruiting varieties can take advantage of dwarfing qualities, extra hardiness, or other characteristics in the rootstocks. It is not uncommon for up to three or four varieties to be combined between the roots, trunk, and top. Sometimes branches will sprout from below a graft, yielding less desirable fruit of a stock variety. Look for multiple trunks or branches that grow in tight clumps from near the base of the tree.

Even the layout of the orchard will tell you something about your trees. A healthy orchard would probably have been carefully spaced at planting time. Watch for trees growing close together or any sort of haphazard spacing. These conditions would indicate that seeds of fallen fruits have taken root or suckers from other trees have flourished.

You may want to wait and observe your trees through a season to see what they will produce before deciding whether they are worth keeping. In most cases, however, there will be some obvious cutting needed in an old orchard.

Pruning is more an art than a science, and calls for good judgment. Cutting out parts of trees, such as twigs and sprouts, helps to shape and trim the trees, to remove damaged or rubbing branches, to thin out crowding branches, to stimulate new growth, and to make other maintenance tasks easier.

While pruning is a dwarfing process, it does not change the natural growth habits of a tree. Trees are more severely pruned at planting time than later on. This is to balance the top-to-root ratio, and is necessary because the roots have been equally severely pruned when the trees were dug up and shipped.

For an explanation of pruning terms, refer to the glossary on pages 2831.

As a rule, all pruning should be done in late winter or early spring while trees are dormant. There are many subtleties in advanced pruning techniques. However, dwarf trees are generally easier to manage than standards, so a few basics should get you started.

The first thing to remember is always plan the purpose and effect of each cut. Look at the angle at which a new shoot is starting to grow or which side of the branch a new bud is forming on to anticipate its growing potential.

On small trees, pruning involves graduating methods of removing excess growth. The first opportunity to control the shape of your tree is, with thumb and forefinger, to pinch off buds, shoots, or branch tips that are starting out in the wrong direction. By careful monitoring and pinching early, you can save yourself a lot of work later on. When shoots get too large for pinching off with your fingers, you can move up to a jackknife or hand-pruning shears.

Wide crotch angles insure strong branch structure. The angle of the crotch on the left is wide. Note the relative thickness of six layers of wood laid down by the cambium in this crotch angle.

On the right, the angle is narrow, and the bark in the crotch angle comes together before the crotch is filled with woody tissue. This results in a weaker joint and encourages decay. A narrow crotch tends to split with heavy loads of fruit and is often associated with winter injury on adjacent bark.

To shorten or redirect an existing branch, make a clean cut at a slight angle about inch above a promising bud.

In cutting or heading back, make cuts just above healthy outward-facing buds.

1. correct cut 2. too close to bud 3. too slanting 4. stub too long

As limbs get larger or when you are trying to save a damaged or overgrown tree, you may have to take more drastic measures. Heavy cuts should be made in three steps: (1) Make an undercut five or six inches out on the branch (this will prevent the bark from tearing away from the remaining trunk when the branch falls). (2) Saw through the branch to remove the major portion. (3) Make a final cut close to the trunk or a live branch, so that no stub is left to rot away. New bark should grow to cover the wound, but do monitor it carefully to see that no rot, disease, or insect problems start here. Some experts recommend tree paints or sealers for larger cuts and wounds.

If you must prune heavily to reclaim an overgrown tree, it is not a good idea to try and do it all at once, especially if you plan to remove many large basal limbs. Your trees will recover more easily if you give them a year or two between major cuts.

Always use sharp pruning tools. Be careful to make cuts with minimal injury to the remaining bark, to foster natural and prompt healing of the wounds.

While pruning any kind of tree, be on the lookout for diseased or damaged limbs and twigs. Such branches should always be removed and destroyed. When cutting diseased growth, it is important to sterilize your tools and gloves after pruning each tree to prevent spreading the disease.