Pruning Plans for the Old Apple Tree

“The old adage tells us a bird should be able to fly through your apple tree without its wings touching a branch.”

I’ve been thinking about our apple tree again, and found the above quotation on a gardening site. Because of the damage our tree suffered during last winter’s storms, we postponed the overdue pruning that I was planning for it. I was getting that organized for last March, but we lost one of the three main trunks at that time.

Later, as the tree leafed out and the apple blossoms set, we found additional damage and took down a second trunk. So, all in all, we pruned back two thirds of the tree to make it safe.

You can also see the bore holes where the birds – sapsuckers, mainly – have drilled into the old trunk. I’ve seen a pair of woodpeckers flying around the yard this fall, stopping on neighboring oaks and dogwoods, before lighting on this tree and making their way around it.

I’d been given a referral to Clyde Jenkins – he of the basket weaving craft I wrote about last week – as a source of insight about taking care of this neglected tree, as well as how to go about identifying the variety of apples we’re growing. With that in mind, I walked around the tree taking some preliminary photographs I can put together in a letter to him, where I will ask his advice and potentially hire him for a consultation.

I’m sure this tree has been around for sixty years or more, since the house was built. It seems like it would be worth a couple of years of effort to save it, cultivating it back into a prized specimen. After all, it reacted with a robust fruiting season this year after all it went through.