Dormant-Pruning Apples for Strength

Reader Contribution by Rick Godsil Jr.
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Winter is fading — so what’s there to do on an apple orchard?

When thinking about orchards a person immediately imagines fall weekends with leaves turning brown, a chill in the air and hayrack rides out through the rows of ripened apples. So what does an orchard look like the other seasons of the year? Well, it is going to be spring soon and the image is quite different. The trees are still dormant — their buds haven’t even started to swell for spring yet.

This is the time of year when orchardists are scrambling to finish up the things they were supposed to do over the whole winter season. Finishing the last of the dormant pruning is the main priority now. There’s an old saying that you dormant prune for growth and shape (and you summer prune for production). Years of trial and error have given us enough wisdom to know how to shape our trees for high Midwest winds and violent thunderstorms. 

We tend to prune our trees a little more open than we would if we lived in the city or in a sheltered area. This allows more wind to flow through the tree, reducing stress, which is very important to the more brittle varieties such as Honeycrisp. Years ago we let some Honeycrisp trees grow unchecked. In the summer of 2007 we had a very strong storm system move through and the next day we had Honeycrisp tumbleweeds eight foot tall blowing around the orchard! An added bonus to this open shape is that there is less likelihood of a fungal disease forming on a tree that dries out quickly after a rain. Many problems that we encounter can be overcome with some basic knowledge of a variety’s characteristics. I recommend doing a little research on what you want to grow and compare it to what you should grow.

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