Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction to Bob Lever and Veteran Fruit Trees
Susan: And today we're talking to Bob Lever he's an expert in pruning and caring for "veteran" or older fruit trees. So today we wanna learn from Bob about how to care for these old trees. But first of all, I wanted to know from you, Bob.
How did you get involved in caring for old apple trees?
[00:00:21] Bob's Journey into Orchard Care
Bob: It started by accident really, 'cause I bought the place where I live now in 1986. And I bought it primarily for some of the open lands that was with it. But I also acquired a, an old orchard with it. That was back in 1986. The orchard actually dates back to before the first World War, so the trees are, the oldest trees in them, are over a century old.
So having acquired this thing, at the time the trees were about, I suppose would've been about 70 or 80 years old when I first got them. I was quite keen to learn how to look after them. I bought the land initially because I used to grow cut flowers, and that gave me an income stream during the summer.
But during the winter, I needed to do other things in order to bring some income, and I started working for a commercial orchard services contractor. So I spent 12 years pruning commercial trees all over, basically Cambridge here and West Norfolk, and including, at the time, a lot of old veteran trees, although there aren't any of those left in commercial orchards anymore.
Susan: Then here's my question. Is this really an issue? Are there so many old trees that need caring for right now? in terms of fruit trees? That is.
[00:01:52] The Importance of Veteran Trees
Bob: Certainly in terms of small orchards that aren't commercial anymore and things that maybe people have got backyard orchards, or you may even get what we call "remnant orchards" that are scattered across what are now housing estates but still have the old trees there, so there are still an awful lot of veteran trees out there.
Just to clarify exactly what a veteran tree is, when we speak about a veteran tree, we mean something that's old. Maybe 50, 60 years upwards. Been knocked around quite a bit. Hollow, got rot, hollows, lots of pruning wounds, all that kind of thing.
Susan: So these are really old trees that most people would look at and say, I guess your time has come,. You've served your purpose. So I guess my question for you is, if these old apple trees are old plum trees have hollow insides, if they're not really producing a lot of fruit or if the fruit isn't good, what is the point in caring for them in trying to save them?
Bob: They're absolutely fantastic pieces of biodiversity, the things that live in hollow trees. You get bats and birds, you get lichens and mosses living on them. You get all sorts of invertebrates that are dependent on old hollow rotting trees for their existence, all of which are part of the wider ecosystem.
Susan: Interesting. So you are saying that we should save these trees for the environment, for wildlife. Can they not find somewhere else? some people might say, these old to apple trees or these old fruit trees are a vector for disease. They're going to attract codling moth and things like that. So can they find this habitat or this food elsewhere?
Bob: It depends what they are. I can only speak for British species obviously, but we certainly have some species that are specific only to apple trees or pear trees or whatever.
If I can give you an example, we've got a very rare beetle now in Britain called the noble chafer. There is actually quite a big project trying to find them and see how many are still left, and they are utterly dependent on old hollow apple trees. They can't live in anything else.
There's another thing which I have in my orchard. I unfortunately don't have noble chafer, but I do have something called red-belted clearwing. And that, again, is an uncommon little insect that requires veteran apple trees.
[00:04:28] Why is Pruning Important and Techniques for Older Trees
Susan: Okay, so let's say we are convinced we want to keep our trees.
Why is it that pruning is an important way to do that? It all seems to boil back to pruning and what is it that pruning does to assist older trees to thrive?
Bob: Basically, if I can go back to the start of a tree's life, if it's a fruit tree in an orchard or a back garden, there is a very good chance that it received pruning in its early years. And if it's an old tree, if it's 50, 60 years old, maybe older, there's a very good chance, certainly in the UK and I suspect probably in many other parts of the world, the part of that pruning was removing the center leader of the tree right at the beginning.
Do you do that in Canada?
Susan: We actually do central leader pruning. So we specifically keep a central leader. But there's different ways to do it and sometimes we do a sort of more open canopy like a vase shape.
Bob: Yes. Yeah. So the vase shaped trees, certainly 50 years ago, were very much more the norm over here in Britain and in Europe.
Central leader trees didn't really come in here until about the 1970s.
Susan: Ah, very interesting.
Bob: The main thing about removing a central leader is that, you then much further down the line of the tree's life introduce structural weaknesses. Because by removing the center leader, you make branches spread out. And when branches spread out, they get longer and heavier and in a veteran tree, the trunk might be completely hollow, the branches might be completely hollow, and then you need to prune them to prevent the trees from simply splitting apart.
Susan: Interesting. Okay, so I'm just going to review for people who are listening to this. We were talking about different modes of pruning fruit trees, and so Bob, what you are talking about is in the old days they created trees in pruning them right from the beginning.
They wanted them to be like a vase, which means that you've got a trunk and you've got maybe four or five heavy, thick branches coming out like in a circle shape that there's no Christmas tree middle to your tree. You have a hollow, it's like a cup. You've created a tree, like that's a cup. The rain can come in the middle.
But your branches are like the rays of the sun. So that is the type of pruning they did all those years ago, and so now we have to keep that in mind when we are pruning an older tree. And we're gonna go into this in a minute, but we have a few emails. So let's say hi to our listeners.
[00:07:22] Listener Questions and Expert Advice
Susan: This one is from Robin.
Hi. A question for your show. I have a question about a poor old apple tree. It's probably at least 40 years old. We did not plant it at the house. It was old when we arrived eight years ago. It produces lots of green, small, not great apples. This year, it hardly flowered at all, which is the first time that's happened.
I think we should prune it back because probably it probably brings in pollinators for the younger trees. I'm getting a little confused on that sentence. it's on sandy soil and is shaded a little by very large walnut trees. So Robin asks, should I keep it and prune it for pollinator attraction, or should I replace the tree?
So we had been Bob talking about these older trees that are pruned into that cup or vase shape. But what Robin is saying, she's got a tree that's a little older and what she's asking essentially, is pruning going to attract more pollinators? Is it gonna save the tree?
Bob: It depends. One of the things I will say is that large walnuts are not very good by apple trees. They're quite, they can be quite hostile to them. So maybe one of the reasons the trees is looking a bit sad is because it's by some big walnuts. But nonetheless, it is still worth doing a bit of rejuvenative pruning if possible.
I'll always say, don't prune too much. Don't take more than about 20% of the live canopy out at any time. But by a little bit of light pruning, you might be able to regenerate some new growth. That is the whole point of regenerative pruning is you are trying to get some new growth more towards the center of the tree so that you can cut longer, heavier, and potentially branches that might break, back. You can shorten.
Susan: That's beautiful. Yeah. So thank you so much Robin for that question. And I like what you're saying. So you're saying one of the reasons we wanna prune these old trees is it will spur new growth and we can choose where that growth is gonna be.
Bob: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Susan: We have another question here and let's see. It's Tim in North Idaho. I have a 60-year-old Winter Banana apple, an heirloom. A cultivar that has a few broken off branches that have large holes. Left large holes in the trunk of the tree. I've heard that filling the hole with concrete will help, although this seems to me that this will just close in and rot and it might be better to let it breathe.
What say you, Tim, in North Idaho.
Bob: Right. Very definitely not concrete. I know they did use to do that in the past. I, I know of trees that have had concrete put in them. It is not helpful. Hollow in the middle is part of the natural aging of the tree. And any engineer will tell you that under stresses like wind and that a tube is more stable than a solid cylinder.
So tree old trees get hollow. There was a famous chap who was an arboriculturalist at Kew Gardens in London, and I can't remember his name, unfortunately. He said trees don't get hollowed because they get old. They can grow old because they get hollowed. So hollow trees are absolutely fine.
You just need to consider that hollowness when you are looking at the whole canopy of the tree.
Susan: Wow. That's, very cool. And then as you consider it, you will decide what to keep, what not to keep. Okay. We've got an email here from Yvonne. I'm writing from Rideau Lakes, township north of Kingston, Ontario.
Our horticultural society has recently discovered a growth of wild apple trees on a hydro allotment. We're thinking of recovering them and making this into a first stage of a productive community orchard. So this show is very timely for us. Thank you so much, Yvonne.
Okay, here's another question. It's from Claudette. Does a hundred year old tree still provide good fruit if the tree was taken care of?
Bob: Yes, it can. It does depend a little bit on obviously the, maybe the cultivar and certainly the general health of the tree. But if you've got a hundred year old trees, and I must stress that not all cultivars can live that long and it will also depend on the rootstock that the cultivar is grafted onto, but if you've got vigorous veteran trees, it's perfectly possible over the period of about five or six years to get rid of a lot of the unproductive wood so that you still have the basic framework, the big hollow branches. But you can get it. And indeed, I've done this on quite a few of mine, back to the point where all of the laterals are less than about five or six years old.
And if you can get them to that stage, then you have a productive tree. Again, I have an extremely productive, very fragile old Allington Pippin in my orchard, which is a sort of relatively local variety to me, what you would call an heirloom variety. Now that is completely hollow in the middle.
It's extremely fragile. We've got very few very light branches left on it, but it has produced some stonking great apples this year. So it is possible. It is possible as long as the tree is basically healthy.
[00:13:06] Restoring and Maintaining Veteran Trees
Susan: So we know we can prune these trees. We know that it will be beneficial for them. We know that it will possibly give us better, better fruit, but even more important, it will provide habitat for the natural environment. Now, a lot of these old trees, these a hundred year old trees that were pruned into a vase shape so many years ago, they're going to be congested.
When you see them, they're just gonna look like a big mess, aren't they?
Bob: Yes.
Susan: So how are you? And you mentioned that we can only prune off 20, let's say 25% of the living branches on the tree. So how, what's your strategy to, to look at that messy old tree and to start cleaning it up?
Bob: So the first thing to look at are whether you think there are any branches that actually threaten the being of the tree.
Are there any branches that are really too big and heavy and need to be shortened? And they might be tall branches or they might be long branches or, quite often, what you get are you get, if you get big arching hollow branches very often you'll get a huge great branch going straight up the top off the arching branch, which is solid because it's only maybe about 20 or 30 years old.
And they are the biggest danger really. We call them sail branches or trees on top of trees. Oh, because effectively it's a young tree sat on top of an old tree. Now, it might seem bizarre to want to take out 20-year-old growth to cut back to a hundred year old growth, but that is actually what you need to do to reduce the weight.
So that's the first thing to look for, is anything like that.
Susan: Okay, so let me summarize. So here we have what was originally a cup with, let's say a trunk, five branches each, like a hand going out in fingers in different direction, this beautiful vase shape. And off one of these big heavy five branches, we get a branch that's growing straight up into a brand new tree.
It's starting all over again. So you're saying that one of your approaches will be to cut off that tree that's on a tree? Partly because it's dangerous, because it's so heavy that original hundred year old branch could actually break and hurt somebody.
Bob: Exactly. Exactly. And, not just a case of even if the tree somewhere where it's not likely to fall on somebody, a broken branch that splits out half of the trunk of the tree is not good for the tree.
We want to try and avoid that if we can possibly help it. One of the biggest threats I see to veteran trees is splitting out because if you get things that haven't been pruned for 30 or 40 years and are completely hollow, they do just fall apart.
Susan: Gotcha. Okay. we have an email here from Eric. Okay.
Eric writes, hello Susan. Excellent show today. Very interesting. Where is Bob from? I'm listening from San Antonio, Texas.
So tell us briefly where you're from In England, right?
Bob: I live in Norfolk, in England, on the borders between Norfolk and Cambridge.
Susan: And Norfolk seems to have a lot of some old orchard or old orchard trees that need caring for that were in danger of being cut down because nobody wanted to take care of them.
Bob: Yes, indeed. West Norfolk and North Cambridge here, had a very strong fruit growing
tradition and a big fruit growing industry here. And consequently, there are still quite a lot of veteran trees left over from those days. So we do actually have quite a high concentration of them around, and there's quite a high concentration of big old
particularly Bramley seedling trees.
Susan: Okay. So when you are restoring these old trees and you're removing the trees-within-the-tree kind of thing, that you're removing the center of these old trees. What is your goal?
You want more stable branches, but when we're pruning younger trees, and I know this is very different, and I teach a whole workshop on pruning your brand new tree that you plant in your garden, how to take care of it right from the start.
Air circulation is our priority. We need to know it's not gonna be too crowded in that tree canopy because when the canopy is too crowded with branches, you get pest and disease problems. There's moisture that just stays in the tree, and the fruit quality is terrible because a lot of the fruit is shaded.
Is air circulation, lots of room between branches, important when you're looking at an older tree?
Bob: Particularly if you want fruit quality, that is important and what you would need to do. If you want to restore a veteran tree, right to the point where you are getting really decent fruit quality, again, you're gonna probably have to do it over five or six years because, I must reiterate, you should not be taking out more than 20% of the live canopy, an ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM, of a tree in any one year. Basically, the tree needs its leaves to photosynthesize and feed itself. If you take out too much, you are reducing its ability to feed itself.
Susan: So that is a very severe warning for all of us, no more than 25% people.
And I gotta tell you, I've been teaching about pruning and teach people how to prune for like almost a decade now.
Everybody, including me, we get so tempted. Just one more cut. It will help so much. Just one more cut. But at some point it tends to be a chainsaw massacre, and the one that gets hurt is the tree. So 25%.
Bob: Yeah, on a younger tree, 25% I would agree with.
But veteran, 'cause one of the issues about veteran trees is if the tree is already in poor health and you take out 20%, or you take out more than 20% and it's not in a position to make new growth, you are likely to actually enhance its decline rather than inhibit the decline.
Susan: Okay. So we wanna keep it healthy.
We wanna get it healthy again.
So Bob, in terms of pruning fruit trees, we talked about how to start cleaning out that tree to improve the quality to encourage healthier, new growth.
I wanna ask you, if I were to just go and dive in and prune off a bunch of branches randomly, would that help?
Bob: Not necessarily. One of the things that I quite often see people do with big old trees is they just lop a load of stuff off the top because they say, oh, it's too big, it's too high.
And if you do that, because of where the growth hormones are situated in a tree like that, where you get the growth back is at the top and you just end up creating more congestion instead of less congestion. What is much better is to try and locate whole branches. I'm not talking about the main framework boughs, now I'm talking about the lateral branches coming off them.
[00:20:35] Effective Pruning Techniques for Older Trees
Bob: If you can locate whole branches that are badly placed, you can very often thin out canopy quite considerably with just a few, sole cuts.
Susan: Wow. It reminds me of one of my early fruit tree care teachers. He said, you can do a thousand cuts on a tree. I cut every little branch here and there and think about it too much and get your 20% and remove it and take it away.
Or you can sometimes do one cut. It does a more effective job at cleaning up the tree and you've done your 20% for that year. You do another 20% the following year.
[00:21:13] Understanding Tree Structure and Pruning Tips
Susan: So what you are saying, and just to review it, is you've got that original structure that probably your tree had if it was a hundred years old.
It's that cup shape. It's that vase shape. You're cleaning out the middle, with lateral removing lateral branches, that's not that original. The scaffold branches are the original five branches that made up your cup. The lateral ones are growing off the big heavy branches. Am I correct?
Bob: Absolutely.
Susan: Okay. So tell me, are there any other tips that you can share about pruning older trees like this?
Bob: When you are removing laterals, it's quite important to choose where you remove them to. And one of the most effective places to remove them to is to cut them right back to where they are growing from the scaffold branches just above the collar, because the branch collar is where there are lots of cells that can produce new growth.
So you cut out one big old 10, 15, 20-year-old branch, and you'll get some young shoots back in the exact same place, again, which you are then able to thin out or train to become the new branches of your tree.
Susan: Wow. So back to, you had earlier described that, you've got your five branches, you cut off the tree within the tree, so there's one big heavy branch growing up, and if you need to cut that branch off. You, what you're saying is you, when you say to cut it back to the collar, it means don't leave a big stub.
Don't leave a big stub. Stubs are entryways for all sorts of problems. You wanna cut it almost to the original branch, but leaving the collar is just this fine, this small layer of tissue. It's, I call it, I see it like a turtleneck. it's just this round, little tiny turtleneck around each branch. And that way the tree will, it will heal, won't it?
Bob: Indeed, that's the best way to get them to heal. It's interesting you call them the turtleneck. When I used to work for the Orchard Services contractor, we used to call it the elephant's foot.
[00:23:27] Strategies for Pruning
Susan: We have a great question here again from Yvonne. So she's from near Kingston, Ontario, and she says, with wild trees that have likely never been pruned, where would you even start doing the pruning? She says, year one, year two, year three.
Like how would, how will they go into these old wild apple trees and help them when they'd never had that original structure? The cup shape structure?
Bob: It may be. You'll have to look at each tree as it is and see if you can see any sort of things that might be structurally dangerous to the tree. So if you've got a, for example, one big branch that grows off hugely at one side or something like that, you might need to consider something like that.
But with wild trees, it's not necessarily, you may not have to prune at all, but it depends what you want to do with it, really.
Susan: Yeah, for me, this is for Yvonne , the training that I do and I teach people again how to grow fruit trees from scratch. I look at a tree like that and I look at air circulation.
I just wanna know that it won't be a home for scab, apple scab and diseases. So I like to go in and find big branches that I can remove somewhere in the middle just to let the air in. And, you may wanna consider one of my courses to learn a little bit more about that type of pruning. But yeah, for me, I would go in and just clean it up a bit on the inside with the correct pruning cuts. How do you feel about that, Bob?
Bob: Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely valid. Any, anything that is gonna improve light and air in the tree is gonna improve your fruit quality.
Susan: Exactly. Yeah. Okay. We've got another email here. This is from Sharon in Chatsworth, Ontario.
Sharon says, this is a great podcast for me. Our property has so many old apple trees that I've often wondered about revitalizing. Three and two years ago, I planted a new orchard with multiple varieties all purchased from Whiffletree Nursery, and I learned a lot from Susan's Fruit Tree Care course.
Okay. So she is a student of my course. We got our first six Asian pears this past summer. Lots of deer around here. That's from Sharon. Sharon, I thought your name was familiar. It's Sharon's one of my students. Okay. Now we have a couple more emails.
Wonderful participation today. This one is from Monica. Hi, I'm Monica from Edmonton, Alberta. Last year I started pruning our thirteen 25 to 45-year-old apple trees that we inherited when we bought our acreage. I noticed this year there are many vertical growth branches near my previous pruning. I was told they are called water sprouts.
I was told these vertical branches are to be pruned as they would turn into the tree on tree that you previously described. Do you think I could use some of those to graft onto new rootstock? Thank you, Monica. Oh my goodness, so much to talk about there or what? What would your response be to Monica?
[00:26:43] Dealing with Water Sprouts and Grafting
Bob: That's a really good question actually, because thing about what we call waters sprouts. You do want to retain some on old trees. Now I know on younger trees, you don't want things like that because, as Monica so rightly said, they're what do turn into the trees on top of trees. But with veteran trees, you need to keep a few of those so that if you need to shorten the framework, scaffold branches sometime in the future, you've got something big enough to shorten back to.
So what you can use your water shoots for in, and we're only talking about old trees here. I'm not talking about things that are 15, 20 years old. I'm talking about things that are, 35, 40 upwards. You can think about actually tying some of those shoots down at an angle. So they go to make a branch going in the right direction.
And if you can actually start planning the future of the tree like that, right from the very first time you start to restore it, you think, Okay, I want this to eventually be the new leader of the tree. It might be 20 years down the line, but I want this to be the new scaffold. And that is perfectly reasonable to do that.
Susan: That is incredible. That's a wonderful idea. So again, I like, it's the teacher in me.
I like reviewing things. So these, first of all, these water sprouts that pop up, they're often a response to bad pruning. If it's in a younger tree, they can be a response to somebody over pruned a few years ago. Oh yes. I've done that before where we pulled down these vertical branches to a more horizontal position, they seem to set. It's called training. They seem to, after a while of being weighted down, they will stay there and those, more horizontal branches, are more likely to produce fruit.
She was also asking, and this, I don't know, those water sprouts, are they good for grafting?
Bob: Oh yes.
Yeah, they should be, 'cause you have nice thick healthy shoots, between the thickness of about a drinking straw and a pencil are perfect for grafting. So yeah, if you want to propagate your tree, the water shoots would be a jolly good place to collect graft wood from.
Susan: That's fantastic. Okay, let's see. We've got a nice email here from Paul. Paul from Doyle Stone, Southeast Pennsylvania. Can you prune the larger trunks or branches? If the tree is very overgrown, how much can you prune an old tree? We have an old tree that's still producing yet it is very tall, I'm guessing about 25 to 30 feet with lots of suckers up high too.
Those straight up and down branches. Not quite sure how to get it under control. One of the large trunks is clearly in distress as a lot of its bark has fallen off, and yet it still produces.
Bob: Yes, that can happen. Why the bark has fallen off? I couldn't necessarily say, in the United States or Canada, 'cause you may not have the same pathogens that we have here.
Over here, if we get massive peeling bark like that, very often it happens as a result of something like damage or squirrel damage. But very often that what I'll say about peeling bark on large branches is look around the edge. Does it look as though it's peeling up around the edge?
Does it look as though the bark is trying to grow back? Because if it is, don't worry about it too much. Whereas if it looks as though it's spreading, then that might be a branch that you need to target per reduction or removal.
Susan: Yeah, I think that makes total sense. And what you're saying is look at the quality of the branches that you wanna keep. You don't wanna keep the sickly ones, and even if you do have to cut off one of those big old branches, you will eventually get a replacement. It may take a hundred years for it to get that thick again. But, that's a great question.
We have one more email here. Let's have a look. This is from Monica in Edmonton. Thank you so much for your reply. I appreciate your input. I am so looking forward to using your suggestions next spring. So Monica really found what we said helpful, so that's incredible.
Bob: That's good.
Susan: Okay, so what have we have gone for a while talking about different do's and don'ts when it comes to pruning old veteran fruit trees.
Is there anything else that comes to mind, another point that you really wanna share?
[00:31:38] Pruning Large Branches and Avoiding Dieback
Bob: yes, very definitely. One is about shortening branches. If you need to shorten the large framework, scaffold branches for any reason, and sometimes you'll have to just because of the sheer length and weight of them, sometimes you're gonna have to say, I need to cut a third off the end of that branch because if I don't, it's going to split.
You need to choose where you cut back to carefully. In an ideal world, if you are cutting a bit of a main bough off, and that piece you are about to cut off is about six inches in diameter, then the new branch that you are leaving as a leader for that bough needs to be at least a third of that diameter. So it needs to be at least two inches round at the base.
Susan: Okay, so let's clarify that one. That's tricky. So you have a big old tree and you wanna shorten a branch, but this is not a skinny little branch the size of your finger.
And for me, when I look at that, I'm like, uhoh, it sounds like it's gonna be a stub at the end, because if this branch is six inches thick.
What's gonna happen? Will new sprouts come from that branch? So what are you saying? What is the caution you are giving us?
Bob: The newer branch, the younger branch that you will be cutting back to the branch, that will become the new leader of that piece of the scaffold must be at least a third of the thickness of the big piece, the diameter of the piece that you cut off.
Susan: Okay. Okay, gotcha. So here's the deal. Somebody might come along and say, I wanna shorten this branch. This branch is way, it's just sprawling. And they just may randomly cut it anywhere. And what you're saying is, don't do that, don't do that.
Choose an area to cut. Where there is a branch that is a significant thickness that will service the continuation of this horizontal branch. Don't just randomly cut it, especially if it's a big old branch. So you have to have a continuum.
It has to be merging the energy like a highway, like into a new stream of the highway, right into That's a very good analogy. Yeah. So you're going west or something, right? You're going on, into a different highway. So no random cutting to shorten the branch. Make sure there is a thick enough branch to go to.
So you said that branch of the highway. That new younger branch, which is still quite established, should be at least you said three inches thick?
Bob: It must to be at least one third of the diameter of the piece you cut off. So if the piece you cut off was six inches across in diameter, then the new branch that you are cutting back to wants to be at least two.
If the piece you were cutting off was nine inches thick it would need to be at least three. It needs to be at least a third of the thickness of the piece you have just lopped off. That's not just fruit trees, that's actually generally good arboricultural practice.
Susan: And tell me what would happen if I cut my big, heavy, thick branch and I'm doing a new highway, but the highway, the new branch of the highway, so I'm shortening it.
There's another branch going in some direction I want it to go into, but it's less than a third. What will happen?
Bob: What sometimes happens doesn't always happen, but what sometimes happens is that you get dieback on the opposite side of the main framework bough to where that branch is. If the new leader is effectively too weedy to keep the bark alive and to heal up at the end where you've made the cut, then you get dieback there.
And that dieback can creep further back down the tree. I have seen some really awful cases of that, and it's worse with some cultivars than others. There are some cultivars, some of the big old bombproof, triploids, you can do it and get away with it without too much trouble. But we have, for example, we have a, what you call an heirloom, a variety over here called Cox's Orange Pippin, that's very prone to canker and mildew and all sorts of things. If you butchered a Cox like that, there's a really good chance that you would end up with getting dieback way, going way back down, back down your scaffold branch.
Susan: Interesting. On the point that you just suggested, you're actually, by making sure that the continuation of your shortened branch is thick enough, you're actually protecting that thick original branch. That branch, that thick original branch could get sick and weakened if you prune in the wrong place and prune and allow the continuation to be some weedy, little, skinny little thing.
That's what you're saying, is it not? Absolutely. Interesting. Okay. We have another email here. This is from Judith from Colorado Springs, which are preferable for grafting. Okay. I think this has to do with the title of her email. Oh. Oh, this is a good question. She says, water sprouts or suckers.
Which are preferable for grafting, and grafting is when you are going to use these clippings to grow a brand new tree, what's your response?
Bob: It depends what you mean by suckers because we, over here, tend to use the word sucker to be something that is arising from the rootstock.
Susan: And we use the same term.
Bob: Okay. So a sucker is going to be the rootstock, not the cultivar, basically. Yeah, you could perhaps use it as a rootstock, but it might not produce a very nice apple.
Susan: Exactly, Great question though. Really good question. Because it's, when you ask these questions, you find out, but yes, you would be disappointed if you grafted a sucker from growing from the rootstock onto some other rootstock.
You would get a tree, the fruit would be horrible, but that's okay. It would be a nice tree anyways. You'd like it anyways. Okay.
[00:38:01] Final Thoughts on Pruning and Tree Longevity
Susan: So Bob, I wanna thank you so much for being on the show today. I have learned so much from you.
In all the years I've been growing fruit trees, I always start with the younger trees and there's often a reason for that. It's a new space. There are no existing fruit trees. But talking to you over time, I have really learned the value of these older trees and I wish I could somehow bring one of these old apple trees to my orchard to serve that purpose of attracting wildlife, and to have the wonderful challenge of bringing that tree back to good health. So it sounds like there's a lot of people who wrote in who have that wonderful challenge ahead of them. On Facebook, there are people who shared fantastic stories of beautiful old trees that will be saved. Thanks to you, Bob. Do you have any final things to say to any of the listeners about these veteran trees that you wanna share?
Yes, and it is actually about young trees, because the veteran trees aren't going to live forever. What we need are trees that can take their place and things that live. Most of the trees that you buy from nurseries nowadays aren't gonna live a hundred years because they're not on appropriate rootstocks.
If you want to make a veteran tree for the future, you need to choose a nice vigorous variety that you know is capable of being long lived and put it on a nice vigorous rootstock. That is how we will get the veteran trees for the next hundred years.
That is an incredible suggestion. So it means that while I can't transplant an old tree to my park right now, what I can do is do something for people in a hundred years time.
Absolutely. That's incredible. Bob, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know everybody really enjoyed your feedback, so hopefully you'll come back again. So thank you so much. Thank you. So that was Bob Lever, an orchard educator from the United Kingdom.
[00:40:05] Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
Susan: Now, did you enjoy the show today? I really hope you did. And if so, I'd love to ask you a favor. This podcast can be downloaded from a lot of different pod catchers, like iTunes and Stitcher, and shows with more ratings are promoted more to new viewers. So I would love it if you could right now go to your podcast catcher and rate and review this show.
Your ratings and feedback make me feel great, but they'll also help bring more listeners to the show, making it possible for me to continue producing it for many years to come. To listen again or to download other episodes, you will find them orchardpeople.com slash podcast.
I'm Susan Poisner from the Fruit Tree Care training website, orchard people.com. Thanks for tuning in, and I look forward to digging in to a new topic with you.