Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction and Goals of Fruit Tree Growing
As a fruit tree grower, our goals are really quite simple. All we want is healthy fruit trees and a good quality harvest. And in order to achieve those goals, a lot of new growers, they'll go off to the garden center and they will buy fertilizers and pesticides.
And they hope these things will help them have a better quality harvest.
[00:00:22] The Importance of Pruning
But what if proper fruit tree pruning could help you achieve those goals without even having to resort to using those chemicals? that's also the topic of my brand new book, Fruit Tree Pruning, The Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees.
So I had Harold Thornbro from the Modern Homesteading Podcast. I invited him to come and interview me.
It is an absolute pleasure to join you today and ask you some questions. I just got through your book. I read it and as a guy who's been growing fruit trees for many years, I learned so much and I'm just excited for people to really get to know the book and hear some of the answers that you will give on some questions today I think you're gonna I think people really be blessed by it and I think that they're gonna really enjoy this book when they pick it up. I'm so glad you liked it, and this book has been like 10 years in the making of me trying to figure out one thing at a time, why I'm doing these things.
Why are people telling me to do, giving me these instructions? Why is some of the pruning that I'm doing not working properly? So I am so happy to dump it all in the book, organize it so it's as easy to read as possible and to help inform other people so other people don't have to struggle like I did.
Yeah, that's really helpful. There's a couple of ways to learn. It's learn the hard way and do it yourself and make mistakes and correct them. And like you and I have both have done a lot probably. And it's also learned from other people who've done it before and already learned from their failures.
And I think that's the best way to do it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. while we're waiting on some questions to come in from the audience, can I ask you a couple of questions? As a guest host, I feel like I should get first dibs on this and ask a couple of questions. Totally. Absolutely. Yes.
[00:02:08] Pruning vs. Fertilizing and Spraying
In light of the working title of this episode and in your new book on the topic of pruning trees, where would you rank pruning in importance compared to fertilizing and spraying to prevent pests and disease in order to produce better fruit?
I think that's a great question. And we had no choice. So we planted our fruit trees in a public park and we were not allowed to spray. We are not allowed to use sprays, definitely no chemical sprays. We didn't know anything about fertilizers. And I knew that if you use them incorrectly, you can actually mess up your soil.
You can freak out your tree. So I would say pruning is the number one thing that we had to learn. Little did I know that just by pruning your fruit tree correctly, you can minimize disease problems. And one of the worst things that you encounter as a fruit tree grower, you plant this young tree, it looks all healthy, and within a year or two, you get spots on the leaves and things start happening and the tree gets weaker and weaker.
With correct fruit tree pruning, you're actually opening up that tree to air circulation, which allows the top of the tree to dry out more in the sun, with air circulation, with the wind, and it keeps the tree healthier in that way. So I'd say it's number one. Number one and you don't hear that usually people think I need to fertilize this tree and you spray this tree and especially if it's showing any kind of signs of disease or anything.
Yeah. I mean I read it in your book and I'm convinced you're right I think that pruning might be the number one thing. I agree with you after reading your book. I definitely agree with you make a strong case for it. It's funny because I was, just this past week, talking to the International Society of Arboriculture's Ontario chapter, and I gave a talk on fruit tree fertilizing.
And I'm talking about the importance of a soil test, it is important to know, just if possible, when you plant your tree, before you plant your tree, if there's anything missing from the soil. But after that, if you've got pretty balanced soil, you shouldn't even need to use fertilizers. The reason I bring this up is I took them through a whole journey about how should you fertilize your tree and what should you do, but it all looped back to pruning because pruning does two things.
It helps keep your tree healthier, and it helps the tree direct the energy in its root system to a limited number of branches. So more branches means a weaker tree because the energy is so divided up. So weirdly, fruit tree pruning is fertilizing in a strange way. Does that make sense, Harold?
Absolutely. Even doubly so, if you chop and drop, which I'm a permaculture guy, so we do that, but yeah, you really just take that energy. And again, if you just take certain parts of it away, that energy has to go somewhere. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:05:10] Winter vs. Summer Pruning
we have a couple of questions coming in, but I want to ask you one more because I feel like this one's a really important one, and it may, by you answering this, it may answer a lot of folks' questions, and it's about winter versus summer pruning, and I've always been a late winter guy.
I've pruned my trees in late winter guy. Like I said, after reading your book, things are going to change a little bit about the way I prune. Could you talk a little bit about that and maybe the contrast or the differences in winter and summer pruning. Yeah, so let's start at the beginning of the journey. There you are, Harold, and you are ready to plant your first tree.
You got this little baby tree, it's a really small tree. Maybe you get it bare root, which would be ideal, and you plant it in the ground. And you want that little tree to grow quickly. So winter pruning is the way to go. Because let's put it this way, winter pruning stimulates growth and summer pruning slows it down.
Now, when I heard that, I was like, why? Explain this to me. But think about the tree. So your tree, your little bare root tree has been dug up from the fruit tree nursery. So its little roots carry nutrients that it put in when a tree is dormant. Okay, in the fall or whatever the leaves turn brown, the nutrients go into the root system for winter storage.
So then you get this little tree with roots that are filled with nutrients and those nutrients have to be divided up to the number of branches or even buds on the tree. So if there are 10 buds on this little whip, this young little tree. Each bud will get one tenth of the energy in the root system. If you snip off three buds, which is called a whip cut, which you do with bare root trees, then there's seven buds left.
Each bud gets more, I'm not great with math, so I can't figure out what the percentage is, but each bud will get more of the energy from the root system. The bud will have more energy to push open, to create a sprout and to grow longer and stronger. That's why winter pruning spurs growth. That's why people with young trees pretty much always do winter pruning.
Then your tree grows and hopefully you're pruning it annually to create a beautiful sculpture for the tree that will support a heavy harvest. And there's so many reasons why we shape them as we do. The tree gets bigger and bigger. So here's the problem. Your tree, your once young tree, turns into a really big tree.
It's a beautiful structure. And do you really want to keep energizing the trees by pruning because you know that every time you remove a branch, the remaining branches will grow more, they get more energy. Aha! So if you wait until after blossom time, so the tree in the spring, all those nutrients come up from the root system, they go up into the tree, they open the buds, they make flowers, they make leaves.
They even form little fruitlets. And the tree at that point is so tired that if you cut off a few branches, the tree will not compensate with more branchy growth. You're not going to get more branches. In fact, the way tree hormones work, when you prune a little bit later in the season, the energy will be redirected into fruit production and creating fruiting buds.
An easy way to remember is, winter pruning stimulates branchy growth, and summer pruning slows growth down. Does that answer the question? I think it does. And I think that even if that energy is going into that fruit, not only are you going to get bigger, better tasting fruit, you're probably going to get healthier fruit as well, because strong fruit fights off disease has been my experience.
Yes. It's fascinating. Sweet fruit is interesting that the pests even pests do not like sugars there. They can't digest sugars, whether it's in the leaves or in the fruit. So the sweeter so energy in a tree is sugar. It's carbohydrates. It's yummy stuff. And by removing some of those unwanted branches, that energy is going into the remaining branches that it can then sink into the little fruitlets.
So the fruit will be bigger and sweeter and tastier. Exactly what we want. And now I'm getting hungry. Oh boy, I don't have a snack. I need a snack near here. We answered that question just in time. Jane had just sent that question in about when to prune because that is a common question. That's what most people want to know is when to prune.
So yeah, that was really good that we answered that question. Let's go ahead and take a couple of these questions that are coming in.
[00:10:01] Questions from the Audience: Identify the "Why" for pruning established fruit tress and stick with the strategy
Kelly has asked, what about letting fruit trees get bigger, but thinning enough where they still produce quality lower fruit, leaving the top ones for birds?
Which fruit is that a pest problem and which is okay? So Kelly is essentially saying, I want to give some fruit to the birds. Yes, and are the birds a pest problem? Here's the problem with Kelly's approach. Or maybe is that a pest problem drawing in pests, leaving a lot of fruit up high, maybe too, bringing in pests, maybe.
It's like what you were saying, Harold. It's do you want a lot of fruit on your tree, or do you want to grow fruit trees for quality fruit? Fruit trees do their thing, and if they're not feeding us, they are feeding animals.
And there is part of me that wants to, in our park, I would love to have a full size crabapple tree so that it does feed the wildlife. But Kelly It is really dependent on what your goals are. If what you want is sweet fruit, I would prune your tree. And here's the other thing.
If you want strong branches, I would prune your tree. If you want a tree that stands up, I don't know where you are, Kelly, but for instance, in 2013, we had an ice storm here in Ontario, in Toronto. There were broken branches everywhere. Big, mature trees had broken branches. Our little orchard, and the trees were still relatively young, not one branch broke.
Because the way we prune and structure our trees, it creates a structure that can support a heavy harvest, but it also creates a structure that can withstand harsh weather. Your choice. Also the problem is when you have a big tree and there's fruit way up at the top, you can't do holistic sprays.
It's hard to get at. You can't do organic sprays to protect the fruit. Let's say you want to use kaolin clay or something like that to protect the fruit from pests. You can't do orchard socks to protect the fruit. So these are your choices. There are pros and cons. Yeah, absolutely. I like having my fruit down where I can reach it.
Even then there's still always some you can leave or you don't grab it. I find that there's always just coming in a little bit late sometimes to pick, and there's always going to be a little left for the birds, no matter what, because you're not going to get to it before it's too ripe to really pick.
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have another question from, let me find it here, from Daniel says, I inherited an old pear tree on some property that has not been maintained at all for years. I am trying to save it. What would be the indicators to just eliminate it?
Oh, goodness. No. Okay. So why would you want to cut down an established tree? If the tree is so diseased that it has oozing goop coming out of every crevice? It's called canker. Honestly, Daniel, we have had to remove trees in Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard when we will do it if we have to do it.
Sometimes you have to. But sometimes these old trees are the strongest. They've got such beautiful root systems that go far and wide. And often disease is just an inconvenience for a big old tree like that. If that's the case, if the symptoms of disease, and I'm assuming that there might be, are on branches, those branches can easily be pruned out.
And I know of orchards, this is crazy, but they will take, let's say they have plant a variety of fruit, let's say a type of apple, nobody's buying it. Let's say Empire apples, nobody's buying them anymore. They actually cut down some of these mature trees, like one cut, like a big cut, and then they graft, bark graft, a number of scions to change the cultivars because they've got the benefits of these amazing established root systems, these strong trees.
So unless that pear tree is just overcome with disease, I think it is absolutely worth saving. I say to people. Often, they, people complain and they say, I have a fruit tree in my backyard, but it's really, it's not good fruit, and it's not the fruit, it's the pruning. It's the, tree wants to produce good fruit, but it doesn't have you guiding it to tell it where to direct that energy to.
And pruning is how we do that. I hope that makes sense. That's a fantastic answer. I love the idea. The tree is unsavable at the top, but you got that great rootstock use it. it's so established. I think it's great advice. Great advice. Yes.
[00:14:49] Natural Fertilizers and Soil Health
we have a, see, we have a question coming in about natural fertilizers.
Mary asks, what about natural fertilizers? Are they better for our trees or do they really not do anything? Do they just make us feel good about helping the environment. Oh, natural fertilizers are where it's at. It's how our planet has taken care of itself without us building factories to make stuff.
And you can think of it this way. If you pump up your tree with synthetic fertilizers, the fertilizer will go right into the tree. And it'll make the tree grow. What it does, though, is it bypasses the little organisms in the soil. So those organisms will then say, we're not getting fed with organic matter.
Let's die or get out of here, right? So those organisms will not do what they do. And you know what their job is? Their job is to feed the tree. So what they do in a perfect world, let's say you put compost in the spring around your tree's roots, And the compost, how does it break down the organisms go and they say, Oh, yummy, this stuff is good and they eat it and they poop out, nice stuff that the tree can take in. Our trees' roots don't have teeth. They can't chew. They can only take in nutrients in liquid form. The organisms in the soil help. So if you go to the garden center and get the bottles of this, that, and the other, sure, you'll feed your tree, but you're bypassing the organisms, and now your tree is dependent on that food, and the organisms will take off.
If instead, you use compost. Homemade compost is amazing. It has organisms in it. You're putting organisms in the soil. You're also putting food for the soil organisms that are already there. It's a win-win situation. The nutrients go into the tree then can make leaves, and it produces its own energy.
And here's the crazy part, Harold, this is crazy, when I discovered this. Fruit trees make their own energy, all trees do, but then they dump anywhere from 20 to 60 percent of the energy they make into the soil, they just dump it. And who gets to eat it? The organisms. So the tree is feeding the organisms and the organisms is feeding the tree.
Use natural fertilizers. You are helping that cycle to happen. Bring in fertilizers from outside. You're interrupting the cycle and it's not going to be as good. Yeah, I'm a huge advocate for using my homemade. Compost my homemade compost teas. I love those using, other plants like comfrey and things like that to feed the soil.
I'm just a big advocate of that. I think it really helps. it makes a big difference in the health of your tree. And I love closing the loop and using those things on my property rather than bringing in outside things that I don't know that much about. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, we, see, we got some other questions here.
[00:17:42] Pruning Techniques for Different Climates
Do I need to cut off the branches to make it grow taller? He's talking about, he was talking about his bees. He has, this, this is, EJ from, Lofton, Northern Norway in the Arctic. He says he keeps a couple of beehives and he has different apple types on hardy rootstocks and his trees are healthy, but don't grow that tall.
And he's basically asking, do you need to cut off the branches to get them to grow taller? Oh, how interesting. First of all, Norway. Yay. I think that's so cool. Okay, so you've got bees, Norway's winters, summers are short, so you do have a shorter growing season. Your question is interesting. If you have, like I usually here in North America, you're going to do winter pruning with the young trees, and then as the trees get to be the size you want, you move to summer pruning.
But in Norway, you probably are going to keep doing winter pruning. Because you want your trees to get bigger because the summer growing season is so short. So I think that's your strategy. And when I say winter pruning, do it right before the spring while the tree is still dormant. That's the best time, and the reason is, and I don't know where you are in Norway and how cold the winters get, if you do it midwinter and there's going to be a deep frost, you've got open cuts on the tree and the frost can get in and damage the cells and you can have some die off.
But if you wait until while the tree is still dormant, right before the spring, make your cuts then. And remember, whatever branches remain, those are the branches that are going to grow longer and taller. Hopefully that helps. This is a comment coming in from Emily, and I think it's a good comment that we can maybe discuss for a second, says we also need to know which age growth produces fruit on the tree.
So you need to know your trees, right? In some cases, letting a tree grow big and tall won't necessarily produce more fruit. Many trees only produce fruit on one or two year old growth, and I think that's a great point to make. That is such a good point to make, and it's also an important point to make, and I cover that in my book, is that it is so easy, for instance, with the situation with peaches, grow the fruit on last year's growth.
So not new this year's new shoots, but last year's. What if you're giving a cleanup on your tree and you cut off all of last year's growth? You don't get any fruit, so it's really important to know, whereas apple trees usually have more flexibility. You can have fruit growing on branches that are a few years old, and so you don't worry about that as much.
But that is a really good point. Thank you. It's Emily that pointed that out. Emily, yes. We'll probably jump in one more here before we go to our break. What are your thoughts on pruning stone fruits after flowering? Yes, interesting. Stone fruits are a great example because anybody who grows like plums or peaches or apricots can see how vigorous these trees are.
They get really big, really fast. So I remember when I first learned how to prune, Norm Herbert, who was my teacher at the time, he said that for whatever reason, commercial growers often prune their trees during blossom time. During blossom time, which by the way, I would avoid with apple trees and I even avoid with stone fruits.
I wait until after blossom time, and again, the goal here is to slow growth. We want the fruit. We don't want a huge three story tall tree. So that's why after blossom time is good. And just on that note, our cherry trees in Ben Nobleman Park, they produce a harvest in maybe early July. So we actually prune after the harvest.
And we sometimes take our pole pruners, and there's branches that are interfering in the structure that also happen to be covered with ripe cherries. We will prune them off. Rip off the cherries and eat them and enjoy them. But we do this carefully. We're only pruning out branches that are not part of our structure.
I know when my peach tree is extremely vigorous in its growth, I have to I take the max I can every year, which is probably around 25%. And I just take as much as I can of that and try to get it thinned down and chopped down because it just sends those branches way out every year. Oh, yeah, they do.
They grow so, so vigorous. Cherry trees are the same like that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Maybe we can do one more here. I skipped over one, what is the permanent remedy for root rot or collar rot? This comes in from Ronnie. He says it's very prominent in India. Oh, how interesting in India. I'm thinking monsoons, right?
That's what I'm feeling. Yeah. Yeah, so with root rot, we had it once in our cherry trees as a result of overwatering. I had raised money to put in an irrigation system and it was a sprinkler system. It was a bit of a disaster, not the way you're supposed to irrigate trees for us.
We actually had to pull back the mulch, not mulch too thickly on top of the roots, to let air into the root area. Yeah, so inside the soil you need water. and fruit trees need water, but fruit trees don't like wet feet. They can't be sitting in water. So you want to make sure that you are allowing some air to get into the root system.
And if you're planting new trees in India or wherever you are, if it's a damp climate, you may want to plant on berms or in raised beds, and make sure the soil is nice and well draining soil. Yeah, great advice. And I think when you prune, he talks about collar rot also, pruning maybe in a drier period for sure and make sure there's not a lot of rain coming in at that point.
Yes. That is such a good point.
[00:23:34] Spotlight on Fruit Trees
Yeah, I definitely want to get to more details about pruning and more of these questions, but first I think we need to take some time for our spotlight on fruit trees feature each month. You ask experts to share their go to cultivar and what makes it special.
My name is Rye Owen and my husband, James and I own Raintree Nursery out in Morton, Washington, which is just at the foothills of Mount Rainier. The Nadia cherry plum is just an outstanding fruit. As a little girl, I grew up with having cherry trees around in our backyard. And we'd always pick around 4th of July, or at least hope to, and lo and behold, you'd wait, and the birds would get to them.
But the Nadia cherry is the cross between an Asian plum and a cherry. It's a little bit easier to grow. It grows on a dwarf rootstock, so it's easier to reach and you can oftentimes get there before the birds do. And in the true spirit of Raintree Nursery, it is a unique fruit that you just won't get your hands on in the grocery store.
And so it is so special because you have to know the right person. It's something you really only experience if you grow it yourself or if you know someone who does. The best way to get ahold of us or to browse our whole catalog is to go online at Raintree nursery dot com. We have spent countless hours updating our website with beautiful photos of the plants.
The website really offers a unique ability to get all of the growing information to find out exactly what you're looking for and get tips on how to successfully grow it. So raintree nursery. com is definitely your best bet.
You're listening to Orchard People, a radio show and podcast brought to you by Fruit Tree Care Training website, orchardpeople. com. I'm Harold Thornbro of the Modern Homesteading Podcast, and I'm today's guest host. I'm interviewing Susan Poizner on her new book, Fruit Tree Pruning, the Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees.
So Susan, you ready for some more questions? I am. I'm so excited. Awesome. Seems like there was a little bit of, maybe some confusion on a couple things.
[00:25:48] Clarifying Raised Beds for Root Rot
We, in the last section, we, we talked to answer the question on, on root rot and I was, a little bit confused about raised beds. He says root rot remedy raised beds.
You didn't really mean like wooden squared off raised beds. You're really thinking about like mounds of soil higher up, right? Probably. Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting because, recently in my meetup group, we were talking about raised beds and there's somebody in my meetup group, Ron Perry, who studied how raised beds can be the solution if you've got rock hard soil, and again, that would keep the roots really wet.
So yes, it can be berms. But if, you need to build a wooden raised bed, that will still raise it up. And it means that the soil will be a little bit looser and hopefully better draining. yeah. Awesome. Yeah.
[00:26:42] Pruning Techniques for Old Trees
Kelly also said, you talked about both spring and summer pruning when renovating old trees.
Can you clarify which would be best? Oh, yeah, I can actually, because I see this as a spectrum. So it depends how much you want to slow growth.
If you want to slow growth just a little bit, you might let the tree just put some energy into opening buds and blossoms and then boom, prune right away. If you want to slow growth more, let your tree form fruitlets and then cut off the branches with the fruitlets. It's just how much energy are you allowing the tree to expend?
Think of it as running a marathon. Do you want your tree to run a big marathon so it's really tired and cannot and will not respond by making a lot of new branches? yeah, so the longer you wait, the more you're slowing growth. Saying that, you do not want to prune past mid summer.
Yeah. And the reason for that is even summer pruning can spur growth and you want that wound to heal up before the winter because you don't want frost damage. Yeah, I love that section in your book where you talked a little bit about that because there's a lot of confusion about what summer pruning really means.
Is it early or late? And it does make a huge difference on which you do. yeah, you made some great points in your book about that.
[00:28:15] When to Start Spraying Young Trees
Thomas from Philadelphia, PA asks, what year of the tree's life would you recommend to start spraying them in late winter, early spring, with a horticultural or copper mix?
Oh, yeah. Okay. I like that question. What I recommend is that the one spray I would say all home growers need to use is a dormant oil spray and that could be, we use lime sulfur in dormant oil and we started when the trees were very young.
The trees have been in the ground for 15 years. And, what we found is the two years that we forgot, because the timing is very important, you have to do it before the buds open up, what we found is that the years that we forgot, that's when we have pest problems. Horticultural oil coats the tree. You put it in all the nooks and crannies, in all the damaged areas.
And it actually smothers overwintering insects in the tree. So it is taking away a huge portion of your potential problems and making your trees so much easier to grow. So you are your question is when to start? Start young in terms of natural sprays like molasses sprays in an earlier episode and in an article on orchardpeople.com we have an article DIY fruit tree sprays and that's spraying with a diluted molasses spray.
You can do that with young trees too. And in terms of copper and stuff, only use it if you need to. If you've got a problem and copper is the treatment, then you use it. But if you don't have a problem, don't use it. And if you can buy trees that are disease resistant, you may never have to use copper.
Okay. Now that helps me a little bit.
[00:30:08] Natural Remedies for Tree Diseases
Now I had a tree personally, this is my question. I had a tree, a peach tree that had peach curl this year. and I was figuring I was going to have to use a copper spray before the bud, but would the horticultural oil help that? Yeah, horticultural oil mostly is for pests.
Okay. So you can check if, you'd use the lime sulfur mix, the lime sulfur mix helps with fungal diseases. And so it may, you have to look it up, but here's an interesting one, John Kempf, in the episode that I interviewed John Kempf, he talks about using yogurt, diluted yogurt, and he specifically was talking about peach leaf curl.
And this is a very Harold. thing, right? You like doing things naturally with stuff you can make at home or do at home. And listen back to that episode because he had success treating peach leaf curl with with the diluted spray made with yogurt or kefir. I can't remember which one. I've got to look into this.
That sounds very interesting. for that. Okay, let's get back to some more questions here.
[00:31:17] Planting on Raised Mounds
We have, I don't have a name. Toronto Homestead says, I had to look into this before planting. My property gets quite wet in spring, so I planted a lot of trees on a raised mound. The key in planting the main root ball above ground level.
He's just making a comment. Just get that root ball, which I think is important to that flare and how you plant a tree is it makes a huge difference in the future of that tree, really. Wouldn't you agree? Yes, absolutely. And thank you for sharing that comment in the experience. I got to say that in terms of planting on a mound, I was always nervous that because your tree is on a mound when it rains.
The water will roll down the mound. Will it get to the roots? But from what I understand, talking to experts, first of all, as long as your, mulch is absorbent, and now there are some wood mulches that sort of, push away water, but if it's a good mulch, then, it should be fine and it should absorb.
But it's really great to hear people's experiences with that. Yeah, for sure. Stefania asks, is an ash water mixture painted onto the bark helpful for disease? Ash water? I have no knowledge about that. Harold, have you heard of that? I think I've heard it mentioned before. I'm not sure what all the benefits are and how to properly go about that, but it's interesting.
It's something I would actually like to look into to know a little bit more about it. 'cause it sounds like one of them harold things again, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a natural thing that we love. Yeah. Like I said, I hate bringing stuff in from outside the property. I love having things right here on my property that I can use to accomplish all the things that I want to do.
And, that sounds interesting. I definitely would want to look into that. It could even be biodynamic or something. So that is something I do want to do another episode on biodynamics. There's so much to learn there. The one thing that I do paint onto the trunk of the tree is diluted, latex paint and I do that because I want to protect our trees from sunburn in the winter and the summer and also little pests don't like crawling up that stuff.
The white hurts their little buggy eyes and they don't like it. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that, does that help with, like girdling of trees for like rabbits and things like that? Oh, unfortunately it does not. The rabbits have nibbled through that, we've got one tree. I'd have no idea how it's still alive.
The rabbits nibbled all the way around. That's really a fencing issue. Yeah. You can take pieces of, like plastic pipe to cut it and wrap it around. Or you can use fencing or different things I've tried, but yeah, I was wondering about the paint. You kill two birds with one stone.
That would be great. Javier here made a comment to avoid problems from lime sulfur. There are alternatives like Serenade to combat fungal issues. I don't know much about that, but do you know anything about that? sorry, serenade, I don't feel like I'm an expert to talk about that in this show, but Javier is.
Anything Javier says, you guys can believe. This guy is an amazing expert and he's been on my show and yes, so totally don't do it. Listen to him. Yeah. You've made a lot of great comments about the root remedies, the raised beds, the, all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I love it when you tune into my show, because you really add so much in the conversation.
And I really appreciate that. Absolutely. That's great advice in here. All kinds of stuff. Yeah. He made this comment that raised beds eliminate the problem with mound erosion, but the mulch has to be replenished because eventually there is a layer compaction from decomposition, which absolutely keep that going.
Yeah, Which makes sense. So every year, maybe you're adding some more. Yes. It's a good sign that you're feeding your soil because the soil is absorbing that and yes feeding that tree It's a good sign of that. You want that? yes, and guess what? It means that you're farming your microbes I've started to say to people that now even in my backyard veggie garden.
I don't feel like I'm a veggie grower I'm a microbe farmer. I'm all about the microbes. I want to make sure they get enough to eat, and then the veggies will take care of themselves.
[00:35:18] Using Natural Mulches
Yeah, absolutely Yeah, Tina made the comment arborist wood chips are excellent mulch, not the decorative mulches from the big box stores.
And I would agree with that too. Yes. And so I had an episode on that topic because I was concerned in the past that arborist wood chips would have disease in it. And honestly speaking, if the arborist is going to somebody else's yard and they're taking down an apple tree that has terrible fire blight, I would not want those wood chips, but
if it's from a different species, if it's a relatively healthy tree, it is beautiful to have arborist wood chips because it's got the green matter as well as the bark. I didn't realize that regular wood chips from the garden center is just 100 percent bark from the timber industry. I didn't know that.
It's just bark. Be careful too, because I've even seen some of that decorative stuff that's made out of like ground up pallets and things like that, which is, oh, yeah, avoid, I think, for your trees. Oh, wow. I had no idea. I've seen all kinds. Yeah. I've seen all kinds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all caught up.
I may have missed some, but I think we're mostly caught up on questions and comments over there.
[00:36:27] Early Mistakes and Lessons in Pruning
But, I have some more questions I'd love to hear the answers to, and I would actually like to hear about maybe any early mistakes or lessons learned from your own journey. Do you have, did you have any big aha moments or early mistakes that really made you, when you first started pruning, how those experiences shaped the method you teach now?
Wow. So when I started, I brought in people to teach us how to prune every year, and I'm listening to what they're talking about, and my brain was not understanding why do I have to take off healthy branches? This makes no sense to me. So finally, I started to understand that. And finally, I started to understand that we're creating a very curated structure for the tree.
Okay, I get that. But one of the people that helped me, and I should have mentioned him in my book, Ray, he worked with me to, I had so many people who helped guide me, and one thing Ray said to me was this, Susan, be bold. Once you know what your strategy is, once you know whether you're doing a central leader tree or an open center tree, when the tree is young, you can prune off much more than you think.
You can prune off a lot more. With a mature tree, you can't prune off more than 20 to 25 percent of the living canopy. Dead branches, no problem. The living canopy, if you prune out too much, you are taking away too many leaves and the tree will not be able to produce its own energy. But when a tree is young, newly planted whip, not a potted tree from the garden center, a whip, you can literally cut off up to 50 percent of the tree.
And in fact, one of the most traumatic things that I experienced was the first pruning, workshop in our park where Norm Herbert came and hacked up our trees like a monster and laughed at us as we grabbed each other and cried because we were so upset. It's the world, isn't it? It was the scariest. And he was like, he's so funny, actually.
He's got a great sense of humor, but we were like, We had been tending these trees, dragging buckets around the park to water them, caring for them. They were beautiful. They were blossoming. Everything looked so pretty and he is hacking them up. So if there's one lesson I learned early on, it's when you are pruning a young tree, learn what you need to do and then be bold.
The tree will tell you if it likes it or not as the season goes on. I also want to say, and I know that my friend Ron Perry, hopefully he's watching today. I know he was trying to get into YouTube and I'm not sure if he can get the sound. Here's a cool tip. When you're growing a young tree, you sometimes think you have to use your hand pruners and cut things off.
But let's say you make your initial cut, it's called a whip cut. You've planted your bare root tree, it's just a stick, it has no side branches. The day you plant your tree, a whip bare root young one year old tree, you're going to make a cut and cut it down from let's say 10 buds to 7 buds that's just an example.
Then the tree grows and you're going to decide which are the branches you're going to keep and the other ones instead of cutting off you can actually rub off with your finger when they're really young. So the reason I like that, this is a Ron Perry tip and Ron is quite an expert, but what I like about that, it is so minimally invasive.
You are really sculpting the tree. You're saying, honey, I don't want you to grow a branch that's too close to the ground, so I'm just going to rub it off. if you wait too long and the branch is a bit harder, it's lignified, then you have to use the pruner. So those are my two of my favorite tips.
Interesting. Yeah, that's really good. yeah. And that really probably had to overcome a lot of fear to do that because I know when I get new trees, it's you just don't, you think they're just too delicate. You don't want to cut them. You don't want to do anything. Even when the first year you just don't want to even hardly mess with them.
But yeah. It's so hard to change your mindset on that and understand that you're helping that tree. You're not hurting it, but it's scary. It is. I know I've experienced that many times. I love that you said that because what if we flip it in our minds and think of the little tree as Play-Doh, right? Think of it as Play-Doh.
We're just structuring it. It wants to live. It's got these beautiful roots. We're just helping to shape it into a beautiful structure. And once it lignifies, once those branches solidify, that's tree that kids will climb in 50 years time and adults too, and that will produce so much fruit.
[00:41:11] Pruning Tips for Small Urban Gardens
So yeah, we've spent a lot of time talking about these big trees and producing tons of fruit and all this But I got to tell you I'm a small scale guy.
I'm small properties a lot of people only have one or two trees in their yard. They're not running orchards They don't have a lot of fruit trees, but they have a couple and they're really concerned about they want to get they want to get do the best they can with those trees. for people growing one or two fruit trees in a kind of a small urban environment, what creative pruning or training methods do you find most helpful in that?
Is it the same or are there any differences at all? I think it's, the same, but. There are different structures that work better for smaller spaces, but there are also different rootstocks that work better for small spaces. So the secret really is to choose and plant the right tree. And so one of the tips that I share with people in all of my books and all of my courses is most of your work is going to happen before you even buy your tree.
If you can take two hours. and research the tree and research the rootstock. Here's why. If you get a dwarfing rootstock, you have a tree that's never going to get huge. You don't have to fight it by pruning it big time. It keeps nice and compact. But if you accidentally buy a tree from the garden center and you don't even know what rootstock it's on, it can be huge, it will shade out your whole garden, and you will not be happy.
So I think things start even before you take out your hand pruners and even before you plant your tree. And I think the research part of that is really important too, because even though something says it's semi-dwarf, doesn't mean it won't get big. I have some pear trees that are supposed to be semi-dwarf and they're about 25 feet tall.
research what that actually means for that type of tree that you have. What does semi-dwarf actually mean? It does not mean 40 feet. It still might mean 25 or 30 feet. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I have an online course and it's called researching fruit trees for organic growing success. I think it's like a three hour course or something like that.
And I take you through step by step to choose the right rootstock, the right scionwood. To put together and to make sure your trees are going to cross pollinate and actually produce fruit, which is what we all want. There is nothing more heartbreaking than planting, for instance, an apple tree in your backyard.
And five years later, it's like, why don't I have any apples? And it's because it doesn't have a pollination partner. Yeah. I almost want to have a moment of silence for a Mauri here. She says, or he, I don't know which, my apricot tree's bark was eaten off by deer in its first winter.
What can I do? Yeah, that's a tough one. You know what? I had another email about it. I've written a book on fruit tree grafting with Steph Roth of Silver Creek Nursery. And in it, we talk about all sorts of grafting, but what we don't talk about, and Javier in the chat can tell you guys about it, is bridge grafting.
There is such a thing where you can, because if the animals have eaten all the way around and completely girdled your tree, the nutrients can't go up into the tree, the nutrients go up in an area in the cambium, which is right under the bark. So if the rabbits have eaten all that you're in big trouble, but if you're fast enough, you can actually graft a piece of the tree and make a little bridge and support the tree in that way. So let's see what he says. Does he make any comments on that, Javier? Yeah, he's making a lot of comments about tree size, like pruning tree sizes, early on, like when they're young trees, he made some great points here on that. I've been, I was going to go over some of those, but yeah, I don't know if he's ready to think about, say anything about the, girdling the trees.
but he made a great point here about start pruning your tree by one third, so about five feet every year until it reaches the size where you want to maintain it. I think that's great advice. Yes, If the bark was significantly damaged, it's best to start with a new tree.
If the remaining bark is salvageable, protect the trunk with paint and barriers. Great. That's really good. Yeah. I wonder how old Mauri's tree is. Whether it's mature or not. Oh, but it says it's its first winter. So it sounds like Javier is saying the only way. I see that Sheldon is asking about a pear tree.
Did we talk about that? No, not yet.
[00:45:35] Managing Large, Unpruned Trees
I have a large pear tree that is 16 feet high and hasn't been pruned for years. How do I start to prune it? How much pruning should be done per year? Any tips or suggestions to get a more manageable size? A great question. Great question. Okay, so Sheldon, in my book, Fruit Tree Pruning, the Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees, I talk about two things.
One is whether you're starting your fruit tree right from scratch, like a young tree, but there are so many people in that situation. And in that situation, you will never get your pear tree to be the perfect structure, but you will be able to get the benefits of correct pruning. If you stand under the tree and look up, is there good air circulation?
Can you see the sky or do you see a tangle of branches? Because you don't want that tangle of branches. If it's winter right now and there's no leaves, just imagine when it's filled up with leaves how much or little air circulation will be in the tree. So with a big old pear tree, I go through steps in my book, but you can look up and see if you can identify one branch that comes from the trunk and has many lateral branches coming off of it.
So think of it I don't know, a broom or something. You're not cutting one branch at a time, little sprouts here and there. You can look up somewhere in the middle of the tree and when you think, if I remove this one branch and all its lateral branches and take it out, It's going to let air in.
It's going to let sunlight in. You can do 25 percent with a mature tree of the living canopy each year and no more than that. So let's say you do one of those inner branches this year. Wait until next year, look up and find another one and you will get a more airy canopy. You are again benefiting from the energy coming up from the roots in the late winter and into the tree and it will be supporting the rest of the tree.
However, saying that Sheldon, you, because it's a big old tree, want to do summer pruning because if you do this in the winter, you're just going to get more growth. Look at it now, decide which branch you want to take out, put a big ribbon or something around it, and if it's not 25%, you can do two of them.
But one of my pruning teachers said, it's often better to make one big bold cut than a hundred little ones, especially with an older tree. I have so made this mistake and your book really, I, we talked about this when we were talking the other day about how I've just been a, pruner in the late winter, and I did this with all of my pear trees when I really had a downsizing.
I told you they were getting way too big and I wanted to get them down. I did that in late winter. Then they just shot right back up. Exactly. You need to do that in the summer and I did not, your book really helped clarify that for me. And so now I know this next year we're doing some summer pruning on those.
We're going to get those things down to a right size, a manageable size for my homestead. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. . One last question for you, Susan.
[00:48:41] Get Susan's New Book on Fruit Tree Pruning
I want to know about your book. We're going to get this book. We're going to find it. What kind of deal you have going on right now?
I am so happy. This book has been intense work for a year or more, and there's been a lot of people involved. So it's called Fruit Tree Pruning, The Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees. And it is out now. Grab your copy of the book, read it in full color on your computer, on your mobile device. If you like it, you can invest in the paperback version, which is also available in all the Amazon stores. And I'd love to know how it goes for everybody.
So far, the feedback has been really fun. And I think it's been fun for me because people are saying, Oh, okay, I finally get it because it makes me feel not so alone. I used to think I'm the only one who doesn't respond well to instructions if I don't understand them. And it seems like there are other people, people who are like me, they're only going to do it if they get it, if it's logical. And I hope that's what I achieved in this book. It's a great book. I tell you, I've said it to you many times. I've been growing fruit trees for a few years, but I have learned so much reading through it. Thank you so much and everybody in the chat guys, thank Harold, because I could not have done this interview without him clearly can you imagine me interviewing myself?
That would be just weird So thank you, Harold. We did a joint interview before in the past and I just love your questions I love the way you think and I love the fact that you ask, you probe. So anyways, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
You're welcome. It was a lot of fun. So everybody, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to know more about the Modern Homesteading Podcast, perhaps you have a small homestead, Harold's the guy. YouTube any podcast pod catcher, and look for the Modern Homesteading podcast.