Orchard People

Introduction to Pruning Tools
The holidays are coming up fast and it's time to think about gifts for the people we love and also for ourselves maybe.
And when it comes to fruit trees, good pruning tools are important. Just imagine this.
Imagine a surgeon needing to do an operation on you. And let's say he wants to do the operation
and he takes a butter knife. And he's going to operate on you with a butter knife. So, I don't think things would work out that well if he did that. And it's the same thing with trees.
When you are pruning a fruit tree, you really need a sharp, clean tool and a high quality tool to make really clean cuts that are going to heal up quickly.
So good tools can also protect our bodies because if you're doing a lot of pruning with a hand pruner, you can have all sorts of issues like repetitive strain injury and stuff like that. So with a good tool, you might be able to protect your body as well.
Meet the Expert: Ron Perry
In any case, I thought this was a great topic for a show and I invited one of my favorite pruning experts on the show today.
It's Ron Perry, and he is a professor emeritus at the Department of Horticulture, Michigan State University.
Ron is also the author of a book called
Espalier Fruit Plantings For Northern Gardens, Creating Fruit Trees as Art.
And Ron was featured in a previous episode that you may want to go and listen back to it's episode 80, espalier fruit trees for small gardens.
And if you want a reminder as to why we prune fruit trees and how fruit tree pruning is different than pruning native or ornamental trees,
you can go back to episodes 96 and 94 of this podcast, where we talk about those things. Welcome to the show today, Ron.
Hey, it's great to be with you, Susan.
.
Types of Pruning Tools
So, let's start off with why pruning tools are important. Why is it important to choose the right tools?
You used the analogy of, a surgeon who's going to, work on a body, if you will, with a butter knife that's not going to work.
So the same thing with pruning. we have many different types of tools. there are an awful lot of tools out there. that are more electric and hydraulic driven. most of our commercial orchardists, purchase these days. It's very uncommon to see somebody go out into an orchard that has, several thousand trees, and, use, some of our old standard loppers and whatnot.
But for the home gardener and for somebody who's just New at managing, the canopies of trees. the, standard, loppers, secateurs, which is another term for hand pruners, and hand saws all work very nicely.
A lot of these electric tools are battery operated. You've got a backpack or something, or some of them just have a little battery in the hand pruner itself. And even if you just have 10 trees to prune, I suppose that would be helpful for your body anyway.
Well, that and maybe you have arthritis like I have and, you can even just a few trees will really bother you. so using some, even a reciprocal saw with a pruning blade will save you awful lot of pain. and not have to take some Tylenol or something to suppress the pain. so there, there are pieces of equipment you can purchase, even if you have just a few trees to do, but you're concerned about being limited, physically, the, tools are out there.
they're available.
Pruning Techniques and Tips
How is it different than pruning native ornamental trees? Like, with native trees, usually you're just pruning off the dead wood, but, am I correct in saying with fruit trees, you're going to be pruning off perfectly healthy branches.
Correct?
Yes. And also you might be correcting a situation where you have a broken branch or maybe a diseased branch and you want to remove that branch before it affects the rest of the tree. and then maybe structure, you, you may prune just strictly so that you can maintain a specific, system or design or structure that you want in the tree.
and so pruning can be quite important. And I think. One of the things that you'll see with the commercial growers today is they've gone to high density, dwarfing rootstocks so that they don't have to do much pruning, that they can reduce the amount that they have to do in labor and pruning. just remember that pruning is really a corrective action.
and, that if you can do your training during the summer. You can avoid an awful lot of the pruning because anytime you make a pruning cut you're removing Carbohydrates and resources from the canopy of the tree reaching into the wood or transitioning into the root system. So, pruning actually can be deleterious to a tree and, so there has to be a purpose as to why you're going to prune.
Gotcha. Okay. So just a quick summary here. If you are growing high density trees and those are trees grown up against, they're very, they're dwarfing trees, they're packed in together and they're grown almost like grape vines, right? Very close together. That's when you're going to train the branches.
But if you have a freestanding tree, you do need to prune it. You need to prune it in order to improve health, to have good air circulation, to stop diseases from spreading in the canopy, and To improve the fruit quality and I think that's really what people want. They want good quality fruit. They don't want a messy tree with a bunch of branches and little pieces of fruit that just don't taste good.
So that's why we have to do what we have to do, even though it's also fun. mentioned
it earlier and that is that comparison between that native tree or the ornamental and shade tree. To a fruit tree. And that is that we're concerned about fruit production, which is not only for this year, but the next year.
And that we're really concerned about light penetration into the canopy so that we can enhance fruit production and flowering. You don't have to worry about that with ornamentals. All you worry or should be concerned about is taking away, Taking away, broken, diseased branches, or maybe you've got a structure you have in mind, or you're trying to keep that canopy really small, for ornamental purposes and for the visual effect.
And we don't do that with fruit trees. We're not as concerned about visual effect as we are about light penetration into and throughout the canopy.
Absolutely. Okay, we got a whole bunch of questions. Let's have a look.
Sterilizing Your Pruning Tools
Catherine writes, Hello, Susan, good choice for a show today due to the holidays coming up.
Ah, how do we sterilize our tools? Thanks. That's Catherine who's from Toronto. Great question, because sterilizing your tools is important. If you don't sterilize your tools, can you be spreading disease from trees to tree? And how would you do it? So tell us, tell me your thoughts on that.
Well, there's really almost only one, source you have for sterilizing and dipping shears or loppers into a liquid, solution, and that's going to be ethanol, something that has about, maybe 70 percent alcohol, and so what you're trying to do is to sterilize every time you make a cut or every time you make a cut, right?
In some area where you notice that the bark is brown and diseased. and so what you want to do is make that cut and then dip your, your shears or loppers into a small can or some sort of container where it's with you. and that way you're not, you're not, transmitting anything like brown rot in stone fruit or fire blight in, palm fruit.
But, there are people who make the mistake of using a chlorine or, if you will, the brand Clorox solution, which works well, very effective, just like the alcohol. The difference is it will completely rust your pruning equipment.
Yes. So they dilute borax, I think they used to in the old days, diluted in water.
And so that's not good for your tools, but pure isopropyl alcohol, 70 percent is fine, pure. You don't have to dilute it. So that Catherine is a great question. Ron is saying you can dip it into a bucket. I personally put my alcohol in a little sprayer, I'll spray the blades and then wipe them dry with a clean rag.
And I do it before I start any new tree. Or like Ron says, if I'm pruning out a diseased branch, right after I prune the diseased branch, I clean my pruners. Okay.
Choosing the Right Pruning Tools
Let's see, Bob writes, Hey, upcoming happy Thanksgiving to your American listeners, does your guest sell gardening tools? If not, can he recommend a professional and reliable supplier for good tools?
Thank you, Bob. Yeah. Where would you get good tools? well, I don't
sell to first of all, but, and I, there are so many different brands.
you can go to a big box store and find what you want. You can also go to a local hardware store and get what you want. So there are many different.
different types of brands. Probably the ones that you see the most and hear about the most are brands like Fiskars, which is relatively reasonably priced compared to something like a Corona or a Felco. and there are other brands, Baco, there's a number of brands that make really good quality, pruning equipment.
I don't think it matters quite as much what the brand is what you can afford. And then secondly, maintain, that pruning equipment, which is why we're going to be focusing in on sharpening later. And that's because in some cases you pay a little bit more for a piece of equipment and you'll find it'll last longer between sharpenings.
That's one of the main differences.
Pruning Necessities and Exceptions
Okay, Gail writes, is pruning always necessary? So we talked earlier in the show about how important it is to open up the canopy. And we were talking about apple trees, peach trees, plums and apricots. But I think when I look at Gail's question, I guess I'm asking myself, are there any types of fruit trees that if you plant them, a freestanding tree in your backyard, that doesn't need pruning?
Are there fruit trees that you would just let them be.
Believe
It or not, there are. An example would be a pear tree. I know tons of people who will grow a pear tree, and they may thin out some branches every two or three years, because pears have a tendency to throw a lot of upright shoots. And so you'll get some crowding, if you will, right around the leader.
on a pear tree and so you can do a little bit of thinning every few tree, few years. And, basically with pear, if you want to grow it organically and don't want to prune it, you can get away with probably not pruning it. Another would be sour cherry. sour cherries need relatively little pruning.
Where you get into problems is where you get into bark inclusion, particularly with, the stone fruit and sour cherry is a stone fruit. But luckily, sour cherry is also resistant to bacterial canker, so that's why a lot of people in the northern part of our region have a tendency to grow sour cherries rather than sweets, simply because they can, and then secondly, they have troubles with sweets related to bacterial canker.
bark inclusion is a term used for where you have a very narrow, angle crotch attachment to from the branch to the leader or the trunk and you end up having, a lot of problems with, a mechanization, where the, Mechanics of the cambial is squeezed out on the upside of that crotch and over time it becomes very weak and then with some weight such as a fruit crop, you'll see that branch split out because of bark inclusion.
you don't get that as much with pears and you don't get it with sour cherries simply because, they're pretty resistant to bacterial canker.
Your comment about pears is very interesting. We do have one Asian pear in our orchard, beautiful, tree, actually funny looking tree.
We love the tree, but yeah, it really is open enough. It's a tall skinny tree with some with the branches are quite short. there's just not a lot of pruning to do on it. So I find that very interesting that you said that. And in terms of bark inclusion, I think just to describe what you're saying.
Ideally in a fruit tree, you want the branches on a freestanding tree. You want the branches to stretch out widely and be horizontal. And sometimes you get these weird branches that are going straight up and very close to the trunk or the central leader. And that's when you get this tight little angle and that's where it can have problems.
So that's causes something called bark inclusion. So let's see who's next. Walt writes, Hey to you. Hi from Orlando, Florida.
Best Time to Prune Fruit Trees
Best time to prune trees, fruit trees.
Yeah, so, here's where the amateur gardener, home, backyard gardener, is different from the commercial grower. So a commercial grower may have thousands of trees and they may only have one or two people to do all the pruning. And so they'll start in the end of November, first of December, and they'll start with the older trees, because they're less affected by starting to prune early.
And then they'll end up, say in just before springtime, That's when they'll focus on the trees that are young and there are, they are vulnerable to winter damage. So, normally what we look at with the home gardeners, if you can just put off pruning until, say, March. In Florida, it might be February, but it's, time before you get bud break.
even if I've pruned when I've got bud break, and it doesn't really affect us that much. the only problem you get into with waiting till bud break is now, the temperatures get warm enough, you'll have some diseases that will come in. and so you may be vulnerable. to, transmitting the disease.
So, so latter part of winter is what you want, to focus on. Do not prune if you have the option. Do not prune in the early part of winter, even midwinter. I would try to wait. and that will ensure that you're not causing any issues. What happens is if you prune. prune too early in the fall, you'll get a pruning cut and then you'll get act, activation of the meristematic cells that are in the cambium, at that point.
And so they think, hey, it's time to start pruning. dividing cells again and we're going to get active again. So what you've done basically is, prevented that tree from going into dormancy like it should. And you'll get activation of the bark and you probably get some winter damage. and then you won't see that winter damage until the subsequent spring and summer.
Oh, yeah, totally. I had this image. We started off with this image of the, your surgeon operating on you with a butter knife. And when you describe when, when to do your winter pruning, I'm thinking, it's like doing an operation on somebody and then putting them out in the cold and it's all open.
The cut is open and cells can are vulnerable versus, when you prune right before the spring, the tree is going to come out of dormancy and it has ways of healing those wounds when it is actively growing. So it's really great. for people to keep in mind that they want to protect their trees. I just want to quickly go to say hello to everybody, who is on YouTube, our YouTube live.
So we've got Ryan from Jacksonville, Florida. we've got, Toronto Homestead from Halton Hills, Ontario, and Stuart. Stuart wants to know about your book, Ron. it's available on Amazon. Do you want to remind him what the name is?
well, I don't even remember the full title of it, but it is basically espalier, fruit, fruit trees for
Many of the issues that I cover in that book will apply to people growing fruit in the Midwest, in the, temperate zones as well and going down even to Florida. it's basically a different approach than what a commercial grower who's trying to produce fruit would do where you don't necessarily focus on fruit production.
You actually focus more on, maintaining the design of the tree for artistic purposes, in a home garden. So it's a really quite different approach and you're dependent solely on Using dwarfing rootstocks to keep the canopy small, so you don't have to do much pruning and be able to maintain the design that you are focusing on.
So it's a little bit different. That's available on Amazon and about 80 percent of the proceeds. When buying the book goes
back to the operation of our gardens,
here at Michigan State University. So it's really going to a good cause because we're always limited with a public garden, not, having a gate, to be able to, sell tickets to walk
in like many other, public gardens.
Ours is wide open people, faculty, staff, students. From on campus, off campus, come in to visit our gardens, each year, an awful lot of people, and so we have to find ways to, raise funds, and this happens to be one of the ways, that's contributing to the operating budget of our gardens.
So, okay, we got a few more comments.
So, Stuart, there's information on Ron's book. Zsuzsa says, Hello, we are watching the live stream from Toronto Cricket Club. That is very cool. so, Stuart is from Columbus, Ohio. And, okay, Toronto Homestead says, Can a branch get too old to be bent with branch spreaders?
Training and Managing Branches
Training a branch. So one, one option is pruning and removing the branch. Another option is sometimes training it, which means pulling it down. So two questions briefly.
One is why would you want to pull down a branch to train it to horizontal if it's an upright branch? The second question is, are some branches just too old to train?
Yeah. It's a really interesting question. In fact, I actually went through this myself with a pear tree that I'm growing in a container on my deck that I use as a, a perch for our birds that come in on our feeder and I bought it. It was a pear tree I bought, which all of its branches were probably, two years old.
And so they've already been form the lignin in the crotch on all those branch attachments. So there wasn't much I could do, but I was able to reverse it by using, tabbed rubber bands that are UV light resistant, available from different, orchard supply houses. And I use fairly long ones. And so I basically Trailered them, with one another so that I could get some length and then going back to the trunk.
And then I could bring that whole branch down below the horizontal or right at horizontal, which is generally what I try to do. and you do two things when you do that. One is you're going to change the trajectory of the branch so that it fruits more earlier in the life of that branch. And then the, just the gravity of the fruit, later on as the branch gets older, will keep that branch in that case.
the other is that, we're, what we're trying to do is, I'm bringing that branch down.
And yes, it is possible that it will split out. and break, believe it or not. Older
branches. Older branches in particular. Yeah. Because younger ones are very soft and pliable. That's right. And they would work well whether you're using an elastic kind of thing or not.
But an old branch, yeah. If you pull too hard, you're going to break it.
Yeah, and then let's, think about this for a second, and that is, so what? So you break it. I've actually worked with growers on breaking branches, and then what you're doing is, you're basically divigorating that branch. When you break it, and then it will heal on its own.
So if you break it, don't get rid of it, don't prune it off, leave it there. particularly on pome fruit. This is not something you can live with peaches and other stone fruit. Because that's exactly where bacterial canker will come in. It's right in that abrasion, if you will, of any kind, or in this case, a break.
But you can get away with it with apples and pears. Yeah. Interesting. That's a really interesting question.
The other thing is variety. So for example, variety gala in apples, all the branches are extremely brittle. and, if you go to Jonagold, they are not, in fact, you can bring a Jonagold down pretty easily, even on three year old wood, and, it'll, train, without too much trouble.
So it, there is a variety issue on that, and it has a lot to do with the xylem wood that's in that branch and the genetics behind it. So, a good question, but once you get beyond three or four years, yeah, you're probably going to have to live with it, or you may need to go back in and prune using a bevel cut like we talked about, in your pruning book, or you make a cut, so that you disrupt any adventitious buds from developing on the upside of the branch, and you're forcing most of the adventitious buds to force from the base, on that stub, so you, Basically have a stub in that particular case, and you're restarting that branch so that it will go wide and you won't have the angle problems that you have with the trees that were there or the branches that were there.
So just to clarify, Orchard People does not recommend breaking branches. No. We don't go out there and do it intentionally. if it happens on a stone fruit tree, you will need to correct that because there's such a problem with, with canker, bacterial canker, and what Ron is saying that if it happens to be a palm fruit, an apple, or a pear, you may, depending on what the break looks like, it could still be an entry point for pests and diseases, or But it may heal up the wound.
And this is in my book. I really explore how amazing trees are at healing themselves. It is magical, but it has to happen during the growing season, breaking, during the winter, I don't think it would heal that wound. But in the growing season, it would. Couple more quick comments before our break.
we've got Bayou Bell Farms from South Mississippi is saying hello. And I've got a couple more emails I want to go through before we have the commercials. Frank writes, hi to orchard people. This is a really good question. Can we use regular carpentry saws to cut a branch on a fruit tree? What do you think, Ron?
It will take you quite a while because the, teeth are much smaller on a carpentry saw, and especially one that's a rip, excuse me, a crosscut saw. if it's a ripping saw, the bl the teeth are farther apart and larger and, and so it'll go a little bit quicker. But compared to a pruning saw, no, a pruning saw is.
quite superior because the teeth are large and they're angled quite a bit, off of the straight line, if you will, in that, linear part of the, straw, the, of the, metal part of that, saw. So, it'll just take you much longer if you're trying to do that with a, crosscut saw or any other type of, carpentry saw.
I always wondered about that actually, and just my comment on that is in terms of pruning saws as your trees get older, you do need them. And at first I was like, Oh, you need a lot of upper body strength to use these saws. So I had a Corona one. I had one from Lee Valley here in Canada, and I learned, not to push too hard when I'm using the saw, let the tool do the work.
And it was getting better. But one day I was in our orchard and I was sawing off a branch and somebody that our orchard is a public park. So one of the park staff came along and he was doing other things. He saw me working with the saw. It was taking me forever to take off a branch. And he said, you need to get a silky hand saw.
This is a Japanese hand saw. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, try this. He gave me his Silky brand handsaw, Japanese handsaw, and I started to saw and it was like, oh my gosh, my life is so much easier. It doesn't take me half an hour to do a thick branch. I could do it so quickly. And so I, in response to that question, I think in terms of hand saws, what you choose is very important.
And I think you'll also get a cleaner cut with a good saw. if I were to use, I'm guessing that if I were to use a carpentry saw, not having any carpentry skills, it would possibly be a shaggy cut, which is not a good thing because the tree would have trouble healing that. So that's my two cents worth anyways.
just a couple more comments. Tina says, Hi to Susan and guest. What are limb spreaders? So we had been talking about using elastics to train branches. What are limb spreaders, Ron?
You can make your own, you can take lathe and cut them in various lengths because you'll need them all.
When you get into a tree, you'll find you need something that will bring a tree down, excuse me, a branch down, and to open, that branch out so that you get more light penetration. Basically it is. a piece of lathe and then I usually cut a v notch on each end. I know growers who will put a nail and then they'll grind off the end so that it's sharp.
The problem with that is that you wound You, you get an abrasion with apples and pears, not a big problem, but with stone fruit, it's a major problem. Anytime you get an abrasion in our northern part of the country, on bark of a stone fruit, you're basically, inviting. bacterial canker to come in, and it's a good starting point for it.
So if you have a V notch, just a small V cut, if you will, with a, like, for example, a circular saw or a bandsaw, and you do some that are six inches long, one foot long, 18 inches long. two feet long and you'll, need them all because you'll, come into situations where you want to spread a limb out.
So what's happening is. One end of that V notch is attached or propped up against the trunk of the tree. And then the other end of that is going down to the branch to spread it out so that instead of being at, 45 degrees, now you're going to bring it down to maybe 60 degrees. And, by doing that, You basically really help the branch out, by spreading it like that physically.
So to, yeah, just to summarize for Tina, so Tina's probably looking online and
she's seeing you can buy these spreaders. Yes. And again,
the goal of the spreaders is to, these branches that are going upwards, and interfering with air circulation in your tree and creating branches that are not producing fruit.
We want to pull them down somehow. So the spreaders do that with these little notches, but what Ron is saying is you can make your own. and Tina go to orchardpeople. com and I've got two articles. On training fruit tree branches. So if you see there's a section all with all my articles about pruning, there is a couple of pruning articles, but there's two where I interviewed Ron and we talk about these options because it is so important, especially as your tree gets older.
You want those horizontal branches because they produce fruit and they keep the canopy nice and open. Beautiful question.
Listener Question and Sponsor Break
Quick comment here from Amy, and Amy is listening from Dayton, Ohio, and she wanted to know about your book, which we talked about. So, let's take a minute, listen to a word from our sponsors.
I want to, after the sponsors messages, I want to talk about.
Pruning Tools and Techniques
Pole pruners, hand saws, we talked about hand saws, pull pruners and loppers and hand pruners quickly. And I want to talk about tool sharpening. So Ron, are you okay staying on the line for a minute?
Yeah. There is one question though that I'm going to pose from my end and it is, That is, do I need to treat a wound, after I've made a cut on an, on a branch that's larger than say one inch in diameter?
and I'm
the, answer to that question is no, you really do not. Because what you're trying to do is allow UV light to come in and basically let nature take care of itself with wound healing. Some of the healing compounds out there, Don't really heal. in fact, a, some sort of a latex paint will work just as well as any of the healing compounds.
something like a white paint, but yeah, you need to avoid using, some materials that are sold in various garden centers saying that this will really help you out an awful lot and you'll get faster healing this way. Well, not really.
Not really.
I'm so glad you brought that up. I'm surprised we didn't have a question about that because I have had questions in the past about that.
The Importance of Proper Pruning Cuts
What I find is magical is if you do the correct pruning cut when you're removing the branches and it there is such a thing guys as a correct pruning cut and you're leaving the little it's called a collar it looks like a little turtleneck around the base of the branch you don't want to remove that.
You want to cut just past it, and the reason is, trees have this magical way of healing themselves, but if you take away that collar, they can't produce the cells to cover the wound. Amazingly, within hours or days of making a pruning cut, that wound will heal. The tree does the work. It produces cells that cover and protect.
If you're painting it with some stuff you bought at the garden center, it's stopping, the tree from doing what it needs to do. I am so glad you brought that up, Ron. Thank you for that. You bet. Oh, okay.
Sponsor Messages and Show Introduction
So let's have some words from our sponsors. And we will be back in just a minute. You are listening to Orchard People, a radio show and podcast brought to you by the fruit tree care training website, orchardpeople.
com. This is Reality Radio 101, and I'm Susan Poizner, author of The Fruit Tree Care Books, Growing Urban Orchards, Grow Fruit Trees Fast, and Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone. And so Soon I'm coming out with my newest book, which is all about fruit tree pruning. Anyways, more about pruning after the break.
I'll see you then.
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Welcome back to Orchard People with your host Susan Poiser. To get on board, send us an email. Our email address is. Info at orchardpeople. com. And now right back to your host of Orchard People, Susan Poizner.
Hello, everybody. You're listening to Orchard People, a radio show and podcast brought to you by the Fruit Tree Care Training website, orchardpeople.
com. This is Reality Radio 101, and I'm your host, Susan Poizner. In the show today, we've been talking about the best fruit trees.
Discussion on Pruning Tools
Fruit tree pruning tools. And my guest is Ron Perry, professor emeritus department of horticulture, Michigan state university. And he's the author of a book called espalier fruit plantings for Northern gardens, creating fruit trees as art.
And it's available on Amazon. So. In the first part of the show, we talked all about, why printing is necessary. We talked a little bit about training. We got into a little bit about using hand saws.
Now earlier when we were talking, you told me that you only really use hand pruners on young trees.
Okay.
And that mostly, if you're using a non electric tool,
it will be a lopper. Loppers are longer, they're two handed.
Why do you prefer loppers versus hand pruners when it comes to older trees?
Well, you don't get the tendon stress, that you'll get in your hand, and your wrists, if you use, hand pruners.
and so if you're having to make cuts, where the branch is greater than say one half inch in diameter, it's not easy to do and you have to have really sharp hand pruners, if you want to be able to use those hand pruners, and that's why I, generally just, I go in and I'll use a smaller, lopper, if I've got a lot of trees to do, at one time, I had some 15 acres of, rootstock trials going at one time, and so I had a lot of trees.
But for example, this is a really small grape lopper that I've got here. It's only about a foot and a half long and it can do everything the large loppers can do. And because they're small, even in the blade area, then what happens is you can use this very easily to manipulate, to make a pruning cut even on a small branch.
So it's just, a matter of preference. I know people who love to use hand pruners, but there is a point where you just, it just, it's too tough a cut and it's really hard on you as the person pruning.
I think that's interesting because also when I was first planted, when we planted our orchard, I was always using the hand pruners.
The trees were so young, so small, tiny little branches. really it's not necessary. The older they get, the more I do find myself using the loppers. And I have a small, I have various loppers. I have small ones. I have ones with extendable Arms, I think it's a fiskars. I really enjoy those. They can go higher up in the tree.
But one of my favorite ones is a big fiskars, huge. It can cut up to branches that are up to two inches thick, which means I don't have to use the handsaw and I'm in there. The one tricky part is it doesn't get into too tiny nooks and crannies. So that's the tricky part, but I use both of them. But yes, I find as our trees are getting older, I'm more using, the, loppers.
Now here's the other question.
I use a lot of pole pruners. We are not allowed to use ladders in our park.
So we've got two fabulous pole pruners from Fiskars, not expensive. We use them.
We don't have hundreds of trees, but they work for the trees that we have, which is about. 18 or something.
One of them has an attachment. Or a saw, so it's a pole saw as well. And I look at this thing and I think I'm never going to use that saw because you have to move up and down with like a 20 foot stick.
And, have you ever successfully, Ron, used a pole saw with a really long extension, and successfully managed to saw off a branch high up in the canopy?
Yes, but then, like you say, it's really a lot of hard work, and as I was telling you in a conversation we had recently,
my father had a walnut orchard, and he had a 20 foot long wooden handled pole pruner and he would put the base, on the ground and then he would basically manipulate the head where he wanted.
And he could use it to cut with the saw blade on it. And that's what he would do because you don't want to make too many cuts. like even with the lopper, part of it because it just takes too long. you're much better off making, thinning cuts on a larger branches and you can do that with a saw.
so the, what you do with the saw blade is you're going to use it To bring a canopy down in height, for example, and so you might be making a thinning cut that it's down in height so that you can basically get that canopy back down to where it's manageable, rather than working with a branch that is 30 feet in the air.
Your dad must have been like Superman. Like he must have had a very struck, because you told me he was not even a super tall man or anything. No. Right.
No. He was my height but he was very strong even up until he was 80 years old. He'd be out there with a pole pruner, but he wouldn't use the lopper part of that.
It was just strictly a saw blade. Basically, he was using.
Wow. Okay, so quick hellos. Cliff, my husband, is on YouTube and he says, hi, Ron. Hi, Cliff. And we've got, oh, Javier is on the line. He's on YouTube as well, saying hello, enjoying the show. PK writes, I like the look of electronic loppers. Oh, and Roslyn is hi there from South Africa.
Hey, Roslyn. Thanks for joining us. PK talks about electronic loppers. I know that there are electronic hand printers. Is there such a thing?
Yes, there are. And you can, get, those, they have a pole on them, an extension, very useful, some of them, you can also get with, has a little chainsaw on the end of it, and they're operated by either a motor or usually an electric, batter, battery that can be charged, the, it's the, merchandise today has really, developed technologically, so that now you can buy these battery operated, pieces of equipment.
that if you've got a lot of trees or a lot of pruning to do, it's really useful. If you only have a few trees to do, that's a pretty expensive capital outlay. For making a few cuts. that's why I have a reciprocal saw that I use, pretty religiously when I've got a branch, it's greater than an inch and a half, two inches, and I can't cut it with a pair of loppers.
I would just get the pruning blade, which fits on just about every reciprocal saw, because it's standard, blades. and you can put that into a reciprocal saw that, that has a battery, to charge it and, man, they're very useful and they can cut very, quickly, through a branch that's two or three or four inches in diameter.
I've even done, Trees that are seven or eight inches in caliper and still be able to use a Reciprocal pruning saw for that.
I think that's amazing because what you're saying is you don't have to have different tools for everything So earlier we had the question about can you use like a woodworking saw on a tree?
So a reciprocal saw and again, I'm not a woodworker at all, but you can get them so that they're for multi purpose. You get a specific blade for pruning, specifically for pruning, right? Right.
Yes. And
so you can use it for all those purposes. So that would be in terms of Christmas presents, that might be a good one.
And you can get a hacksaw blades. you can do cross cut blades. so you can, that's the beauty of the reciprocal saw. You can get interchangeable blades and use them for all different purposes, not just for pruning.
And so you don't have to get yourself a chainsaw.
No. And the other problem you get into with the chainsaw, and I've seen these battery operated, in fact, I've used a battery operated chainsaw.
the problem with that is that you have to sharpen, those chains and you need to keep two or three of them on hand that you can interchange anytime you're out, working with them. And they're great. They do the job. But once again, if you've got something smaller than six or seven inches in diameter, You can very easily just use a reciprocal saw with a pruning blade and then you don't have to worry.
You don't have to worry about sharpening it. You can just go get more blades. it's a lot simpler.
Using and Maintaining Pruning Tools
Let's talk about sharpening.
Now I want to say that in our community orchard we sharpen our tools once a year and we do it at the end of the season before we clean up the tools and put them away for the season. We only have about 18 fruit trees to prune. We're not pruning hundreds and hundreds. So we do that once a year. We have two main tools that we use.
This one is well this one is the corona. The Corona Little Hand Pruner, so it's, sorry, a sharpener, it's just a tiny little sharpener cost maybe, I don't know, less than ten dollars. And there is another one, this is a diamond, amazing, diamond encrusted sharpener. And who is this from?
I'm trying to remember. But anyways, so it's diamond shaped and it's got diamonds. And these are the two tools that I use. So, Ron, how often do real orchardists have to sharpen their tools and do they use these fancy little tools that I have? Diamond encrusted ones?
No, they just use a simple metal flat file where, it's not crosshatched.
This is an old file as you can tell, and you can actually see where that the, grid starts. And it's actually a parallel and an angle, and, and so it's pretty gritty and what it'll do is it'll for, I don't know, 4 or 5, pretty simple, inexpensive, and, I use this mainly for loppers.
I do not use this for hand pruners.
I guess it would be too large to use it on a small pair of hand pruners because the blade is small. It's, I think the other thing that people need to keep in mind is you are only sharpening the sharp part of the blade. So one thing, Ron, we didn't talk about
No. Is, you know what I'm gonna say?
The handle,
what am I gonna say?
The anvil.
Okay. Anvil completely.
completely avoid the anvil, loppers, pruners, hand shears. They're out there, and all they do is crush, cell tissue, and they're really just, they're just disruptive to and damage an awful lot of the tissue you're cutting, rather than a good sharp cut.
The sharp cuts you get it. through using bypass blades and pruners, and you're right. You only have one blade you have to be concerned about. and you develop that, edge properly. So in developing that edge, realize that when you purchase that lopper, it'll call, it'll come with what's called the commercial edge.
And that edge is narrow. And sharp in angle and what you have to do as somebody who wants to prune without having to do too much sharpening is you want to widen the edge and then have, say, a 30 degree angle, like we do with budding knives and grafting knives, and to do that, it will take you probably an hour, maybe a half hour of sharpening with a flat file to get that sharpening.
edge you need that's operative compared to the commercial edge, when you purchase, that lopper.
So for people who are listening in the Orchard People YouTube channel, you guys can search under sharpening, go to the Orchard People, YouTube channel. I have an actual video where I demonstrate.
how to sharpen your hand pruners. And it's going to be very similar for your loppers. Now what I do is I don't change the edge. I'm a home grower. I don't know how to change the edge. I'm only doing 18 trees. But what Ron is saying is if you've got lots and lots of trees, you might want to change the angle. I find, first of all, if I have an anvil pruner, it doesn't do clean cuts. Like you say, Ron, it crushes, and that's not a good thing. We want cuts that are smooth and clean, and that the tree can heal.
We don't want shaggy, horrible cuts. And the second thing of course is we need to keep our tools sharp. So just one thing that we have fun doing when we have our sharpening day, before we sharpen our tools, we take some branches and we start cutting them to see how sharp, how good are the cuts. just cutting in the middle of the branch.
And then after sharpening, we do the same cuts and you can see how clean and clear and wonderful they are. So if we want to take care of our trees and we don't want to be doing an operation on our bodies with a, with like a butter knife, it's the same thing for the tools. If there's one takeaway from this show, maybe that would be the one.
So, Oh my goodness.
Let me, let
me show, The group, bypass, loppers here. And you can actually see the edge for which I was speaking about here on this blade. Okay. Can you see that? Okay.
Yep. Yeah. That's what I
want is
I want that edge to be wide and I want that angle to be more, more flat, by doing that.
And then the backside. Of that blade is flat, and so what you're going to do with the flat side is you just put a file flat up against it and basically just move it so that you take the what's called the feathers, they're basically, the remnants of the filing process, that sit up there.
And so you also clean that backside, by doing that and then. On the other side here, we will have, the hook part that it closes on, okay? And we just clean that with a file as well on the back side. and you're, what you're doing is you want the blades to be clean because after you've done some pruning, what'll happen is you'll get it, a lot of bunching of wood pieces and sap, rosin.
And so you want to do that. that's really important. The other things that you have on a pair of loppers, these are fiskars by the way, is you have here a little bumper cushion. When you purchase a pair of loppers, you can pay less money for a pair of loppers, but they may not necessarily have this bumper cushion.
And if you see that completely avoid that, all right, because when you start pruning, you want to be able to do this and still have some arms at the end of the day. And when that is solid, what happens is your arms will feel it. It'll go right down into your arms and your wrists. So what happens is if you have these cushions.
sitting there, then you won't have that problem. So be aware that you do not want to get any loppers that don't have that cushion. The other part to this is the bolt. so you'll do some maintenance and one of the things you can do is put some WD 40 or lubricant, That's inside the blade here in the juncture, but also you want to make sure that you've got a lubricant on the bolt because you don't want it to open on you so that you always have a nice close attachment and fitting against the two blades.
And so you, that's the maintenance part of you, doing work with these, loppers, you will have this bolt and it'll have on the back side a cap and you can control that cap, with, a wrench or some kind of adjustable wrench, so that you can hold it in place while you tighten, the nut that's on here.
but that's really important. You don't want it so tight that it's hard to open and close, but you want it tight enough so that this juncture in here, between the two blades, fits very nice.
Oh, you just did, Ron just did the best demonstration. For those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you saw it.
For those of you who are listening, I am going to post the video on the Orchard People YouTube channel. Ron's demonstration was perfect. So you gotta go, have a look at the video once I post it. If you subscribe to me on YouTube, you will be notified when it comes up. so thank you for that. The other takeaway that I get, Ron, from this is Try the tools before you buy them.
If you're going to be pruning a lot of trees, you want to feel how it feels in your hands. Is it heavy? Does it fit big hands or small hands? There are so many different options. So that's what I would say to you folks. If you are getting tools for presents, for Christmas, for yourself, try them, bring your loved one that you're going to buy the tools for, and know that you're investing in tools.
yourself and in your fruit trees. It's a gift for your fruit trees too, to have good quality tools and to take really good care of them.
Final Thoughts and Show Wrap-Up
Guys, it is already 2. 03 Eastern time and we've got to wrap up the show. Where did the time go? I have no idea. So Ron, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really always love having you.
So I hope you had fun.
It was fun. You always have fun.
Okay. Yeah,
of course I did.
And for the listeners, if you want to know more about today's topic, if you want to learn anything else that you want to know about fruit tree care, here's what to do. One, head over to the Orchard People YouTube channel, click on subscribe, you'll get all my new videos.
Two, go to Apple Podcasts or your local podcatcher, search for Orchard People. That's the name of the show now. And you'll find the podcast and you can subscribe as well. So you'll get up to date notification when the new episodes come out. Finally, go to orchardpeople. com slash sign dash up. And I will email you once a month to tell you when the show is on, what is the topic.
I'll send you all sorts of great notices. So, finally. I am again so excited that I'm on Instagram. If any of you guys are cool and on Instagram, apparently all the cool people are on Instagram. I didn't know that. I would have gone on Instagram a long time ago if I had known that. I'm just kidding. I'm not very cool anyways, but I'm on Instagram now.
It's at orchardpeople. com. Hope to see you guys on Instagram and Roslyn, thank you so much for the thank you on YouTube. Thanks to all of you guys for tuning in. I had so much fun today and I love talking about tools. We'll be back next month. when we are going to talk about another great topic. Not sure what it is yet, but we'll find out soon.
Anyways, take care, have a good month, everybody, and see you next time. Bye for now.