Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction and Importance of Watering Fruit Trees
Susan: Hi everyone. It's been pretty hot and dry in Toronto, and so my colleagues and I have been going out to our Orchard Park every single week to water our trees. That's because fruit trees need water to survive and to produce a quality harvest.
But how much water do fruit trees need?
[00:00:21] Guest Introduction: Matthew Whiting
Susan: My guest on the show today is Matthew Whiting, extension specialist from Washington State University, and he was researching that topic when he came across an interesting idea. Water use differs from tree to tree, and that depends on many factors including tree size, root structure, cultivar, and more.
But what if you grow your trees in a fruiting wall structure? Would it be easier to accurately predict the trees, water needs? And so Matthew tested that idea by comparing cherry trees grown in shrub form with cherry trees that were pruned and trained into fruiting walls, and he discovered that it was easier to predict irrigation needs when the trees were grown in fruiting walls.
He also realized that fruiting walls were easier to prune, easier to spray and harvest. That they can even produce better quality fruit.
[00:01:24] Understanding the Fruiting Wall System
Susan: So in today's show, we're going to talk about the fruiting wall system that Matthew helped develop. This system is now used by commercial growers around the world, and if you want to, you can adapt it to your own backyard.
The system is called Upright Fruiting Offshoots or UFO.
So now to Matthew. Matthew, welcome to the show today.
Matthew: Hi, Susan. Thank you.
[00:01:50] Detailed Explanation of Fruiting Wall Structure
Susan: So tell me a little bit, what is a fruiting wall? What's it gonna look like?
Matthew: Yeah, fruiting wall is a somewhat intuitive description, isn't it? Of a different approach to managing your fruit trees, as you pointed out.
Whether that is in a backyard or whether that's in a 100 acre orchard in eastern Washington where I live. So it's a different approach to manipulating the growth of the tree. To create a structure that, at its maturity, does look like a wall of fruit. And so, that's how the description came about.
Susan: So how are you gonna structure a tree especially, and you are starting with cherry trees? A cherry tree is three dimensional, big branches, grows quite vigorously. So can you describe to us where is the trunk gonna be and what are the branches gonna look like? What will it look like?
Matthew: Sure. Yeah. You're right. If you plant a cherry tree from the nursery into your backyard or out in an orchard and you leave it unattended, It will grow into actually a very globular shape. Cherries are naturally a forest species, from somewhere, I believe, around the Black Sea area.
And they are very vigorous. Naturally. They'll grow to be 80 feet tall if left unmanipulated. And so what we're talking about with fruiting walls is a very radical change in structure and shape and form. And it has, behind it, several motivations. One of those is to simplify the pruning process, and so I'll describe for you just very briefly to answer those questions of what does the trunk look like? What does the tree look like?
[00:03:40] Development and Benefits of the UFO System
Matthew: I began, almost 20 years ago now, at Washington State University, and the industry was comprised of older orchards. Cherry orchards, with, as you described, large trees, very complex structures, often 20 feet tall. So these required a lot of labor for the purposes of pruning. Tall ladders. And then when it comes to harvest, those ladders come back with people carrying buckets, climbing up and down and moving ladders. And I recognized quite quickly that, first of all, I wasn't really very confident in giving growers advice on how to prune those trees because each tree was so very different and very complicated and required a lot of interpretation.
So we went back to the beginning in saying, what can you buy from the nurseries? What do you plant? And how do you take advantage of that? How do you take advantage of the way that cherry likes to grow naturally? And from that, this concept of fruiting wall, and then more specifically, of the upright fruiting offshoot architecture, which is one way of creating a fruiting wall, was really developed.
And so we've simplified the processes of pruning and training through collaborative work over many years with commercial growers' input along the way and have developed this system.
Susan: It's incredible.
[00:05:08] Personal Experience with the UFO System
Susan: So I'll tell you my story with fruiting walls, with UFO in particular. So somewhere online I found some instructions.
I guess perhaps you probably you wrote them. And it basically said, okay, take the young whip, the very young tree. You've got your trellis in the background, and you bend that trunk so that the trunk is going horizontally, and then you get like a jail cell, a number of shoots will come up and down from that bended trunk.
So there you've got your one bent over tree and a bunch of upright shoots that you're going to grow your cherries on. And so I thought, oh, I gotta try this. And yet for me it was counterintuitive because everything I've learned about fruit trees tells me that fruit grows on the horizontal branches that you don't want a bunch of different upright branches because you won't get any fruit.
I have my UFO system in the backyard and there is tons of fruit on that thing. So how do you explain why it is that these upright chutes are even able to produce a nice harvest?
Matthew: Yeah, actually, what you just described there is a good way to think about it with these jail cell bars in front of you.
And that is the main radical departure from all other ways that backyard orchardists and commercial orchardists were growing cherry trees. I wanna make clear, one of the keys was to fill the space, right? Any orchard textbook will tell you've gotta fill the space between the trees quickly in order to capture the sunlight and all the energy that's present in that light energy, and then convert that into high quality fruit.
And by planting the trees at this angle, and then having a horizontal leader that connects the trees, we can do that at the time of planting. So from the first year, the trees should be connected down the road. And then from that point you're growing the vertical wood, from that. And another key point, of course, is that cherry, among the temperate tree fruit species, is especially apical dominant, where that terminal bud wants to grow with not a lot of lateral shoots.
And in all the other systems, particularly as you described, fruiting on horizontal wood, oftentimes you have to make special pruning cuts or interventions in order to increase the amount of horizontal wood to try to get the fruiting. So we're trying to use the way that cherries like to grow and we're trying to fill the space at the time of planting.
Now then your question about how vertical wood can be fruitful. Yeah, just as you say, is very true. That a horizontal piece of wood, everything else being equal, is more productive. They'll tend to set more flower buds and get higher fruit set rates is more productive than vertical wood.
But the big X factor here was the adoption of these new dwarfing and precocious rootstocks. So the concept of the UFO really developed in parallel with the large scale availability of size controlling and precocious rootstocks, so where we can plant at higher densities. And we actually tend to over crop those trees when you have horizontal fruiting wood, so there's too many fruit and, as a result, very small fruit. So the vertical wood actually, just as you say it, it mitigates the crop density somewhat, but that's to the benefit of the trees in this case. And so we're able to balance a little bit better the crop quantity and thereby improve crop quality.
Susan: Incredible. And I think growing a number of different types of fruit trees, I would see how cherries would be perfect because they're so vigorous. Oh gosh, they just wanna grow. Perhaps if I did that with my apple trees, I would have a long wait for fruit because some of them really are very slow to produce.
So I guess my question is, do you have to think quite carefully about what cultivars you're going to use if you're going to grow a fruiting wall UFO structure?
Matthew: I would say, not really. There are a few exceptions. When it comes to sweet cherry, as I said, they're very upright growing in their habit. There are a few exceptions of popular commercial cultivars that tend to be less upright, and those aren't especially well suited to the UFO. They're better suited to systems that fruit off horizontal would, but you'd have a hard time with cherries making a mistake with the UFO.
You mentioned apples. We have done trials with apples in the UFO structure and I have seen apples grown in the UFO architecture around the world, and it actually works really well for most types of apples.
One of the keys, of course, is balancing the tree vigor with your tree spacing, and that sounds like a very simple question, but it's one of the more complicated ones, to balance the vigor and the quality and the quantity of the fruit. But if you can get the spacing of the trees right, it really is very effective for most tree fruit species.
We've seen it with apricots, plums, and pears, apples, various examples around the world.
Susan: And so it started off with this quirky idea on your part. So now, I understand that growers are using this around the world from what you've seen. You've visited sites all over the place, right?
Matthew: Yeah, actually that's been really, frankly, one of the most rewarding aspects of this whole development was to see it being adopted and having emails come from Norway or from China, from Japan, from Turkey, Italy, Chile. Yeah. In my travels, I often run into growers at meetings or on field days that come up and say, hey, we've we just put in our second block to the UFO.
I had a grower from Australia visiting me last week, and he was just interested in UFO. He had started a few blocks a few years ago, and now wanted to transition his other fruit crops into the UFO structure as well. And so, we spent a half day looking at commercial orchards and talking about strategies and pruning techniques and the benefits of using these structures.
So that's really been exciting to see and to learn that the word is out and the structure is being adopted to a certain degree of commercial success too.
Susan: And what do you think accounts for the commercial success?
[00:12:21] Mechanization and Commercial Success
Susan: You mentioned to me earlier about machines that can prune, like you don't even need humans to prune and harvest anymore. How does that work?
Matthew: Yeah, so that, for me, Susan, was almost number one factor in advancing and further refining the architecture was, and the ability to incorporate mechanization. So this becomes probably less of a concern on the list of backyard orchardists who are doing the precision pruning themselves.
But where I work and live in eastern Washington, we produce almost 60% of the cherries in the United States. Actually, almost 10% of the cherry production in the world happens here and are large farms. And their number one issue is labor efficiency because of the reasons that are somewhat intuitive.
The older architectures are more complicated, they're larger, require ladders, and a lot of interpretation when it comes to pruning and training. So really a driving factor was this goal to incorporate mechanization and yes, we've been successful so far. I've had many great partnerships with agricultural mechanical engineers over the years where we are using fully mechanical pruning systems in vertical walls with the UFO.
And finding, for example, that pruning efficiency is improved 30 fold compared to pruning by hand. We've also seen, though, that you don't need to adopt mechanization. I think you mentioned this in your introduction, how it's more efficient for sprays and just labor efficiency in general.
We did a fairly extensive study, almost 10 years ago now, that documented essentially a doubling in harvest efficiency in fruiting wall architectures of the UFO versus older three dimensional more bush style systems. So even without doing anything else, and not incorporating any machines, you can radically improve production efficiency by using these architectures.
[00:14:40] Q&A: Growing Different Types of Cherries
Susan: So we have a question here from Tanya in Toronto. So Tanya writes, which kinds of cherries are the best for growing along a wall? Would Nanking cherries be suitable?
Matthew: Nanking would be a different species than Prunus avium, which is the sweet cherry that we grow commercially.
I would suggest that you really take a look at the growth habit of Nanking in your area if you have some in your yard. And if they have more of a weeping or lateral branching growth habit or of a natural bush style, then I would suggest probably not. It works especially well when you have more of a vertical growth habit and you can expect half of a meter to a meter of new growth every year from terminal shoots.
So have a look at Nanking. I'm not so familiar with its growth habit. So take a look at how it grows, and if you're finding that there's a lot of lateral shoots, that's probably not well suited.
Susan: And Tanya, I would love to hear what you discover when you find out 'cause I'm very curious.
Okay. We have an email from Amy. Amy's listening from Greenville, South Carolina. Amy writes, this is a very exciting topic. Can any cherries be grown along a wall? Thanks. And actually, that's a good question in terms of what about sour cherries? Would they work?
Matthew: So in terms of the broader umbrella of cherries, which would include Nanking and other various species of Prunus, the short answer is no.
And directly for tart cherries or sour cherries, which is the species Prunus cerasus, generally speaking, no. For the same reasons that have been stated, they tend to have more of a very short lateral branching, a lot more lateral branching, than sweet cherries and generally speaking less vigorous and are grown very successfully and very well in more of a bush style architecture.
Susan: It's funny 'cause when you talk about structure, I think about my big sweet cherry trees, our ones in the park, and because the branches wanna grow so long and so upwards, they seem to really want to grow into a vase or cup shape. So they're going out and up rather than our apple trees where we can really train nicely into central leader shape with lots of Christmas tree shape with lots of horizontal branches.
So I guess in my mind's eye, when you talk about that habit, how do they like to grow? If we see those side branches are just growing up, they really wanna grow out and up, that's probably a good candidate.
Matthew: Yes, Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And the tree will respond, most importantly, to those first few years and the training interventions that you make. That's the critical moment. And that's one thing that I really underscore for commercial growers or anybody wanting to try it. The effort in establishing the structure is really in years one and years two, so prior to any significant fruiting. But you've gotta get that that horizontal leader in place, you have to maintain vigor at the terminal end of that tree in the first year, and then allow in the second year, those uprights, or those jail bars as Susan refers to, coming subsequently.
And if you are successful in doing that, you'll completely change the structure of the tree from the beginning. So you won't have that vase structure that it would like to grow to naturally. It'll tend to conform. I often joke with orchardists, anybody who's growing or pruning a tree, that they're very manipulative people.
Because they they are changing the way that a tree wants to grow. And so you have to be manipulative here. And it's so important to do that in the formative years of after planting the tree.
Susan: I like to see it as I'm sculpting my fruit trees.
Matthew: Sure.
Susan: With all the pruning we do, and that I see it as a collaboration.
So I'm working with the tree with its needs, and we're working together to create a beautiful, strong fruit bearing structure for the tree. So partnership. I'm all about partnership.
We have an email here from Gail from San Diego. Does your guest have any of this information online for a reference?
Great question, Gail. Yeah, we're gonna go into more details in just a minute, but is there an online guide for people who want to learn UFO fruiting wall pruning?
Matthew: There is, but it's also a good reminder that I need to do more, so thanks for that. But there is an extension bulletin that three colleagues and I published several years ago now on, I think it was, eight different ways or training systems for sweet cherry.
And it varies from a steep leader to a central leader to a UFO structure. And in that, there are pencil drawings of really step by step planting year one, year two, year three, et cetera. So yes, there is that resource available. That's Pacific Northwest Extension Bulletin number 6 6 7.
So if you just did a Google search actually for PNW 6 6 7, I'll bet that'll pop up.
Susan: I'll tell you what, I'll find the link. I'll put it both in the show notes for the this radio show and also for the YouTube video notes as well.
So we'll make sure everybody can get hold of those.
[00:20:22] Q&A: Starting Your Own Fruiting Wall
Susan: All right, Matthew, let's say I wanna create a fruiting wall, UFO style, in my garden.
I guess the first step is to buy the tree. Are there any thoughts or suggestions as to what kind of tree to select to start off?
Matthew: For sure. Yeah. One of the reasons that we were working on this architecture was because of the nursery stock that was available commercially, which you've already used this phrase and so your listeners may be used to it, which is a whip, which is an unbranched, young tree, right?
andAnd so most cherry trees do come as these whips. And that's very well suited to the structure, and that's where we want to begin. Actually, if you do find nurseries that have lateral branching on their cherry trees, in fact, most times that's undesirable. You'll want to prune those off.
So an unbranched whip is a great place to start, and you wanna remove lateral branches and you wanna pay attention to the rootstock. I'm not sure what options you would have commercially there, but that makes a world of difference in setting up the structure from the beginning.
So find out what rootstock the trees are on. Obviously you'll be seeking out specific cultivars that you like, and start from there with what should generally be widely available as these unbranched whips.
Susan: And do we have to go for a dwarfing rootstock? If we choose a full size tree, we can control that vigor with a fruiting wall UFO structure?
Matthew: Yes, it's a little more difficult. I have seen examples in Chile and in California where growers did use full size rootstocks, such as Mazzard, which is also a Prunus avium selection. And Colt, which is a different Prunus selection, but both are very vigorous.
The difference here will be in your spacing of the trees. If you were gonna put in a small wall, let's say four to ten trees, if you're choosing a more vigorous rootstock, you need to space them out further. If you had access to these more size controlling rootstocks, you could simply plant them much closer.
In that guide, this Pacific Northwest guide for cherry training systems that we talked about a moment ago, there are recommendations for spacing based on the rootstocks, and those are just rough places to start, of course. One of the big differences that you'd have with listeners out east or backyard work would be the access to irrigation or the natural rainfall in their area and how that will impact tree growth.
So keep that in mind. Think about how vigorous the trees are in your yard right now, or that you're growing with and try to account for that. If you have a less vigorous site, clearly you can plant the trees a little bit closer together. But if you've got a lot of vigor, you're always doing a lot of pruning in your backyard orchard, you're gonna wanna plant the trees a little bit further apart.
Susan: Okay, so we have an email now from Dawn from Waterford, Michigan. Hi, Dawn. I just wanted to say thank you for the great information and another pruning project for me to learn about. Thank you, Dawn. Wonderful.
Okay, so we've got our whip, that young fruit tree that we would've gotten from a specialist fruit tree nursery.
It's planting day. Do we need to plant it along a wall or a fence? Do we need to construct a simple trellis?
Matthew: It doesn't need to be along a wall or a fence, but it certainly could be. In fact, your previous show on espalier, I am sure began with this conversation of these old courtyards in the northern hemisphere on the south facing side and getting that sun exposure, was where that concept really began. You could do that. Absolutely. So if you are in the northern hemisphere, you're gonna plant it on the southern wall. And, if you're in the southern hemisphere, you're gonna plant on the northern side. Simple trellis systems are probably necessary, and that can be literally as simple as a few end posts and two to three wires, perhaps spaced about a meter apart. The key will be your first wire. You're gonna want the height somewhere around 20 inches, 22 inches. And that's because that's the height at which you wanna establish that horizontal leader.
And then the key, at the time of planting, is actually to plant the tree at a 45 degree angle in the ground. We are not planting these trees vertically and then bending them over. That creates rather a sharp curvature in that stem, and at that point you tend to get a lot of very vigorous shoots growing at that curve.
So really what you wanna do is plant them at 45 degrees and leave them at 45 degrees, for most, if not the entire first growing season. And then later on in the season, you're gonna bring that terminal and horizontal. That, actually, is a very simple but critical maneuver in the first year.
We started by planting them vertically and then tying them over horizontally to a wire and had those sharp bends and it ended up being a disaster. We got too much vigorous growth right at the bend, and it shut off the remainder of the tree, as you can imagine. So it's important to keep the vigor in the first year at the terminal end of the tree. So plant them at 45 degrees. You could clip it with one little clip or tie to your first wire at 20-22 inches to maintain that angle and leave it.
Really, the only thing you're worried about there is vigorous new shoots towards the basal portion of the tree, but that's really all you're looking for in the first year.
Susan: Okay, so we've got an email here from Glen. Glen says, hello, Susan, is this technique just for cherries? And Glen says, Boston, Massachusetts loves you.
Yay, Boston. Thank you so much. yeah. So is this just for cherries? So we're focusing on cherries, but we're not limited. Is that true, Matthew?
Matthew: Absolutely not limited for cherries. No, not at all. In fact, just this spring, I planted a new orchard in our experimental farm with apples where we're doing precisely these same steps with the goal of creating vertically oriented, fruiting walls.
And yes, we have a simple trellis system in there just as I described. Your process is the same and you really want to start with a whip. Sometimes that's difficult for apples because apple tree nurseries tend to put out trees with a lot of horizontal limbs or feathers in that first year.
And that makes sense because all other architectures are very happy to have those early branches, but we're not interested in those with the UFO structure. So you'd actually end up pruning those out and just recreating the structure from that un unbranched whip.
Susan: Okay.
[00:28:07] Year-by-Year Guide to Establishing a Fruiting Wall
Susan: So we've planted our tree on a 45 degree angle.
It is a whip. It has no side branches. We've tied it or clipped it to our first wire, but we haven't even bent it down, and I've noticed we have not pruned it. We did not give it a whip cut. Nothing. We just left that terminal bud. So do we only tie down the rest of that branch onto the horizontal at the end of the season, or do we wait till year two?
Matthew: So typically, you'll do it in the same season, just later in the year, maybe late summer, early fall. The only trick here is to catch that moment before the tree has become too lignified and you're unable then, subsequently, to bring the end horizontal to the wire. That's the key. So the only mistake is waiting too long, and you come back with these trees that are at 45 degrees and you say, okay, now I want to bring it down onto the wire, and you hear a crack or a snap.
Susan: Ooh. Oh, that would not be good. Okay, so we wanna be working with the tender young branches. Okay, we got two questions. So this one's from Catherine. Thank you for sharing all this precious information. I'm trying to make a fruit wall with Asian pear trees, all grafted on Asian pear, Yali and other seedlings, or the seedlings themselves.
Hope it's possible. Question mark.
Matthew: Definitely possible. Yes. I have seen a UFO system in Japan with Asian pears, and it was absolutely marvelous with the precision and the limb placement and the way that they had set it up on the trellis. And that one was configured to a Y shape. Right as you look down the row, you can have fruiting walls either configured vertically or you can have them configured into a Y trellis. Of course, the Y is a little bit more complicated for a backyard orchardist. I'd probably recommend a vertical wall, but it can be done using the same process. But yes, Asian pears actually looked marvelous in the UFO system.
Susan: So here's a question from Ken. Hi to Susan and guest. Very interesting concept. I would love to try it. Is it very hard to start all this? I'm a relatively new gardener. Thank you for any advice that you can give me. I'm listening to you from Orlando, Florida.
Matthew: Yeah. You know what, the short answer there, is no.
But as I pointed out earlier, really the keys are in the first two years. Once you've got past that, in fact, you will find that this structure is the simplest way to maintain your trees. This was one of the other motivations for developing the structure, was to simplify this artwork that is pruning.
Susan, you described it as sculpting, which made me think of you as an artist would create a sculpture. And that's very much true in the way that most trees are pruned, right? It requires some thought, some interpretation. I like the way you described this sort of as a partnership or a relationship with the trees, but where it's personal. You're looking at the tree, you're interpreting the growth, the vigor, the shape, the health of the tree, and reacting to that to try to improve it.
With the UFO structure, once you have filled in this space and you've created the upright, your pruning processes are very simple. We've basically distilled it down to two key pruning rules that I am willing to bet everybody listening could do. If we walked into a UFO orchard right now, it would take me about 30 seconds to describe to you the pruning rules, and you could do it to perfection, with no more training than that.
Susan: That's great. That's so inspiring. Okay, so we're gonna get there in one minute. So year one, we have planted on diagonal. We have eventually tied it down to the branch. So our leader, our quote unquote, is now horizontal year two. What happens in year two? 'cause obviously not much to prune yet, how do we get these upright shoots to create that jail cell look for us?
Matthew: So after the first year, you're exactly right. Your tree will still be coming out of the ground at 45 degrees. And then as it reaches the wire, it will be then transitioned to horizontal, and if you've had new shoot growth, which you should have in the first year, you'll have at least one, maybe two, new of those first uprights.
And the other key is that it has filled the space to the neighboring tree at that point. Really, that's your goal. So let's say that's your one. Those are the main objectives. The only thing I'll add to year one, though, is you have to look out for what we call bowl shoots or vigorous shoots coming from near the base of the tree.
And this happens fairly frequently. So even though you've got it at 45 degrees, one of these more basal buds on the nursery tree may grow and begin to develop. And just because of its natural position being upstream, right from the terminal end of the tree, it will tend to become excessively vigorous.
And that will also devigorate the terminal end of the tree. And that is exactly what you hope to avoid. So I would recommend, a month or two after planting, look at the trees again and see if there are any new shoots coming from the basal portions of the tree. And if there are, they have to be simply pinched off and removed.
Susan: And that makes total sense because they're competing, they're gonna wanna go and turn into a real trunk, not a sideways horizontal trunk. So we'll remove those.
Matthew: Exactly. Yeah. And if you've done that in the first year and you've got a tree at 45 degrees, a nice gradual curve to horizontal, and then one terminal or two terminal shoots that you've got started as your verticals, that's a great place to be.
Susan: Awesome. Okay. Let's go to year two. Yeah.
Matthew: Year two, you are looking for new shoots across the top of that wire, across the top of that horizontal limb, to fill in the space. You've got that gap now, between trees, that needs to be filled in. And our experience is that buds that are well positioned on the top of that horizontal piece will actually break, naturally, and grow very vertically.
We have found that you don't need to do any sort of intervention of a scoring or any hormonal treatments to these buds to try to get them to break. It's really not necessary in the vast majority of cases. And so, naturally, those shoots will grow in the second year. But you've given the terminal end of the tree a one year head start, and that creates a nice balance among those uprights.
Susan: Sometimes you might have two of those uprights that are a little bit close to each other. Like I'm assuming the spacing should be how many inches apart, between your little upright branches?
Matthew: Eight to 10 inches is ideal.
Susan: Eight to 10 inches. So if I have a sprout going up every two inches, I guess I have to prune some of them off.
I have to pick and choose.
Matthew: Absolutely. Yes. That's a good point. And we've seen cases of that where there's excessive vigor in a site. And most of the buds on that horizontal limb break in that second year into new shoots. And then, as you say, you've gotta just thin those out at the base to well-spaced vertical shoots.
Susan: Okay. So I'm ready for year three. Are you ready for year three, Matthew? I think we're ready. Okay, let's do this. It's a big year. What's going to happen in year three?
Matthew: The most significant thing in a commercial scenario is, year three, you're starting to fruit in a decent quantity.
Those shoots that grew with the terminal end in the first year should be fruiting in year three, because now it is 2-year-old wood, flowering wood, and that's true for apples as well. So year three is a transition year into fruiting, and really, in year three, your goals haven't changed.
You want to have well-spaced upright wood, and your goal now is to get these terminal shoots to develop and grow to towards the top of your structure of your trellis structure. So there's really very little intervention or pruning or training to do unless you didn't get the breaks in the previous year and now you're trying to encourage those. But there's not a lot to do in the third year.
Susan: Now, as time goes on though, your upright chutes are going to get side branches.
Now what do we do? What do you do with the side branches? They're gonna make it messy. It's gonna be a very hairy looking jail cell. There's gonna be branches coming out of all of those multiple leaders?
Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. So that then now we're getting into the sort of the year three and beyond the routine pruning decisions. And the first one, the first fundamental pruning rule for UFO is to remove lateral shoots. So for example, if in the second year you had a new shoot grow vertically, and then it stopped, and it was fine growing in that second year.
Now in the next season, you'll tend to have a few lateral shoots towards the terminal end of that branch and the new extension growth. Yeah. So you look for lateral growth off these vertical uprights. You prune it back.
Susan: You prune it back, or you prune it off? Do we wanna get rid of it completely or do we wanna leave little branchlets that maybe might produce fruit?
Matthew: So that really is a good question and gets into the subtleties, into the art of understanding the cultivar that you have and its fruiting habit. For me, it depends on which cultivar you have, because you could do either. You could remove those lateral shoots entirely and leaving no opportunity for regrowth.
Or, if you have a cultivar that does set a lot of lateral branches and sets a lot of fruit at the base of lateral branches, you can just cut those back very short, let's say two to three inches, and capture that fruit that'll be at the base of that shoot. That's a decision that you'd have to learn from experience with the cultivar that you have in your growing location.
Susan: Now, when you, in a commercial orchard have mechanical pruning robots go through the rows, what are they doing? How long are they leaving the little branchlets, or are they getting right up to the tree and removing them completely?
Matthew: So that was one of the early observations that we had. Hey, just going through and cutting off side shoots is pretty easy.
So using a mechanical hedger or a sickle bar oriented vertically, along the row could accomplish that readily as well. And we've tested that and shown that you can. In terms of how close you get, it really depends on the skill of the driver, frankly, in some cases, and how smooth or rough your terrain is.
But if it's a nice orchard, you can get within three or four inches, routinely, and cut all of those branches back with a machine.
[00:40:06] Addressing Climate Concerns and Final Thoughts
Susan: One thing I wanna clarify is climates are different everywhere. You guys are in a very dry climate. In my climate, it's mixed. Right now it's been pretty dry, but we get a lot of bacterial canker on our cherry trees. A lot of issues.
My concern would be, that this might be a challenging approach if you are in a wetter climate with bacterial canker. You've got these machines or people pruning, not sterilizing their pruners in between trees and things like that. Is there a concern that different climates might have different responses to this system?
Matthew: Yes, definitely. For sure. As you point out, where we are here in the irrigated desert in eastern Washington, we have very few concerns about cankers and diseases or issues related to having wood against the wire, and the rubbing and the damage that can occur from that.
There are decades-old apple and cherry and pear orchards here that have been trellised without any negative effects, but yes, as different regions have different pressures from diseases and pests, that absolutely needs to be considered. We found that a simple hack for backyard orcharding and wires against wood would be to place a little piece of plastic drip line over the galvanized wire right where the tree meets it. And that, oftentimes, makes a world of difference. You don't have the concerns of the damage and the rubbing there. There are also, depending on your region and availability, there are non-metallic trellis wires, plastic wires, that are available.
And those seem to be better than the metal options in terms of inducing damage and having disease problems. So yeah, for sure. Always look at what's growing well in your region, where mistakes have been made, and learn from those. And if you've got problems with trellises, then there are a few things that you can do to get around those.
Susan: That's so excellent. I'm really excited. I would love to hear from the listeners, how do you guys feel about this? This is an awesome way of growing and as I said, I've been doing it for a good few years and I love it. Not in the park, but I do it in my backyard.
[00:42:33] Conclusion and Farewell
Susan: If people want to learn more, we will have the document that Matthew's gonna share, and also I will be editing together a video from this interview, which will be on my Orchard People YouTube channel.
So I also wanna thank you, Matthew. You've spent such a lovely amount of time with us on the show describing this amazing fun system.
And I know for many of the people who you work with, it's might be fun, but it's really practical and it gets them to produce amazing fruit. But for us, it's both practical and it's going to be really fun for a lot of people to try and try their hand at this. So thank you for spending this time with us today.
Matthew: Of course. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Susan. And all that you do for the orcharding culture around the world.
Susan: Oh, I love it. It's just my joy. I love doing this stuff. Kind of crazy, but I love it. Okay. thanks everybody for tuning into the show today and I will see you next time.
Take care, and bye for now.
Thank you so much for tuning in. It's been wonderful to have you as a listener, and I hope to see you again next time.