Pruning in the Orchard

Red Gravenstein apple before pruning

You might think that if you stick a little apple tree sapling in the ground, you can just let it do its thing—then enjoy many seasons of free apples!

I wish. To get a decent crop, apple trees actually take quite a bit of managing. At a minimum, plan on:

*Annual pruning 

*Fruit thinning

*Pest control 

Pruning might be the most important task of all—since you’ll have less fruit to thin and fewer pests to worry about!

And as I mentioned last month, the end of winter is a great time to get your pruning done.

Over the years, my husband John and I had gotten really lax about pruning. We would end up postponing our pruning chores, then try to trim away all the excess growth after the tree had leafed out. 

And guess what—it’s not only really hard to prune with all those leaves in the way, but late pruning only encourages the tree to push out more growth! Then you’ve got a tree putting more of its energy into simply growing, instead of producing fruit.

And one or two growing seasons, we never did the pruning at all. The result of no pruning was an orchard full of hugely overgrown, tangled trees that took many, many hours of hard labor to get back under control. 

Last October, after yet another disappointing apple harvest due to late pruning and thinning, I vowed to do things differently.

 I did a post about ways to manage your orchard trees (the way John and I used to!). And in the spirit of taking my own good advice, going forward, I was determined to get my pruning done on time. And this winter, I actually stuck to my resolution! 

During a dry spell in February, I got a start on our Honeycrisp trees…

Honeycrisp after pruning

Then winter returned with a vengeance. We got a foot of snow 10 days ago, and the lake in our neighborhood is still iced over. 

But this week, John and I got back on the job. We have the lion’s share of our apple trees completely pruned, and we finished the heavy pruning on the last two trees.

William’s Pride variety—pruned!

You can find lots more about apple tree pruning right here on the Little Farm blog: “Under New Management” from October 2022, and “Parsnips, Pruning and Pests” from February. 

I hope these pics inspire you to move forward on your orchard management chores!