Pruning Trees to Grow Low and Produce More Fruit

Fruit trees are one of my passions.  It is the naturalist and the prepper in me that dreams about picking fruit off of my own trees, eating it, canning it, and baking with it.  We have moved a lot in our married life, and I have planted fruit trees in every house we have lived in, and never stayed long enough to eat the fruit.  :-(  Our first house I planted 2 apple trees, and we moved 2 years later.  Our next home I planted a couple more, and we moved again.  Our 3rd home I thought we would be there long term, so I planted 9 trees, all different varieties, and 3 years later, just before we moved, my Apricot tree fruited.  I was so excited, I watched every day, waiting for the perfect day to pick them.   One evening as I inspected the fruit and decided it was ready, I resolved to pick it in the morning because I heard that fruit picked in the morning is always sweeter.   The next morning I went out with bucket in hand only to find Apricot pits all over the ground, and my tree picked clean.   The deer had beaten me to it!
     Tree pruning is like an ancient art form.   The first few times I tried it, I really wasn't sure that I was doing it right, and I probably wasn't completely.  But each year was a little better, and this year it was almost intuitive.  I could "see" what needed to be done in a way I hadn't realized before.  I still have a lot to learn, but I think my trees are starting to shape up nicely, and I'm excited to see how they grow.  This year I took before and after photos for a couple reasons.  First of all so I can track my progress, and secondly so I can show you what I'm talking about when I give you some pointers.

     This is my Dwarf Cherry tree. This is the only one that I didn't take photos of from consistent angles, but its a small tree, so I think you can get the idea.  The most important thing with these smaller trees is to open them up and allow light an air to flow through even after the leaves come in. Sweet Cherry trees should be pruned to a Modified leader system.  This means that the trunk extends from the ground all the way up to the where the highest branch begins to deviate.

    There are two main systems for pruning trees, the Modified Leader, and the open center.  I have a few examples of both to help you see what that means.   Open Center refers to a tree whose trunk divides into 4-5 branches going out laterally at a couple feet above the ground.

     This is a peach tree, and Peach trees should be trained to the "open center" system.  If you can see, I opened this tree up quite a bit, as well as "topped" the tree to maintain a low growing tree that will branch out laterally.   To encourage outward growth rather than upward, you follow a branch that is heading up and when it splits or a new branch is growing off of it, you cut off the original branch just beyond the new branch.  The tree will then focus its efforts on this newer portion as it is now all that is left on the end of this branch.  Click on each photo and view it larger so you can study the differences and try to understand how and why I pruned the way I did.

This is a 2nd year Nectarine tree, which I did some minimal pruning on to stimulate growth.  And actually I think that one coming straight off the top should go too.  Sometimes its a process, and when you step back and just look at your trees for a bit, its easier to get the whole picture.  When you are just doing minimal pruning, you want to take 1/3 of the total length off of branches that were last years growth.  This stimulates the tree to grow and produce more branches.                                                 

    

This is my Fuji apple tree.  It is in about its 5th year, and finally produced a few apples last year.  Not sure why its been struggling, but I think it is going to be great this year.  That is IF it produces.  Some apple trees only produce every other year.  As you can see, this one has some fun, funky growth patterns which I rather like, and am trying to encourage.  Mainly I opened this tree up, and topped several branches.  Also I directed some of the branches in the back to grow sideways as the neighbor has expressed that he'd prefer I don't let the tree grow over onto his side of the fence.   Even though you can't tell, there is plenty of room for this tree to grow without crossing the fence line, so I am trying to be a good neighbor and train it to grow wide rather than deep.  See the one branch jutting off to the right?   I could even support and stake that at some point if I wanted to continue the growth on that.  Also that one growing downward on the left should really be cut off, but I like it, so I'm going to watch it and see how it does.  This is another good one to zoom in on for detail.
     I got a lot of good information on tree pruning from my county extension office.   I found a great PDF file with pictures and step by step instructions, and upon searching for it again, I found it is still there, so here is a link to it:  "Pruning the Orchard"  It has a lot of good information, but the picture of their before and after samples are really hard to see so I have posted my own here.   There are some good diagrams of different parts of the tree and what to prune as well.

     The other thing I wanted to touch on quickly is spacing of branches.   Often a tree will develop a very "upward" growing pattern.  I have found this to be especially true with Apple Trees.  So it is important to insert "spacers" between branches and encourage them to spread out a bit.   Some trees are more fragile than others and occasionally in the effort to expand the space, I have broken the branch, so be very careful here.  If you look closely, to the right,  this is another apple tree, and I have
pruned it to the central leader system, and added a few branch spreaders, but I think only one is blatantly visible here.   If you look closely at the unpruned tree on the left, you can see the shape of the branch before pruning and spreading.  This is a gentle distance so as not to break the branch, but it will encourage a more lateral growth pattern.   Also the end of this branch should get some new branches this spring, and I will choose one of them next year to train outward as well.  Making the tree wider and wider each year, and trying to control the heigth.   To create a branch spreader, I simply use one of the pieces I have pruned off of the tree.  Often it is possible to find one with a "y" shape on the end that will keep it in place better.  And the pressure caused in spreading also holds the stick in place.  I rarely have them fall out, and in some cases I have to actually remove them because they were on too long.

As you can see there are two spreaders in this photo, one is circled and the other has an arrow.  The one in the back is harder to see but it is pushing that skinny twig branch out and away from the tree so it doesn't crowd the middle and prevent light and air from getting all through the tree.   It has been said that you should prune a tree so that birds can fly through.  And with an Apple tree you should have enough room to throw cats through it.  :-)  I think we could fit a cat or two!   Happy Pruning, and remember, its an art!  Enjoy it!