More Pruning

We finally got to the second major pruning task. It was on the list for Saturday, and then again Monday and Tuesday, but we just never got to it for one reason and another.

By that I mean the kids.

But here we are, pruning the mini-orchard at the house. These are trees and bushes we have been planting since we first started gardening almost 10 years ago. The oldest two are the yellow plum and the braeburns.

The yellow plum used to be three-way graft, but one of the them didn’t take very well, and the other one got accidentally pruned off by the landscapers we hired to manage the yard while Ryan was deployed. So yeah, just a yellow plum.

And boy does it have attitude. It suckers like crazy every year. Typically you are not supposed to prune stone fruits in the winter due to risk of silver leaf and other molds getting in the wounds, but so far we have not noticed any ill effect.

So proud of himself! One down, about a thousand more to go.

This is the goji berry patch. Initially it was only two small bushes, but we’ve noticed the oldest shoots were not very productive last year, and it is starting to send out suckers. Also, wherever one of the shoots bends over and touches the ground, it has a tendency to take root. Also, the kids don’t really like goji berries. They are only really tasty either dried or frozen, and then cooked into scones.

So we cut them out completely (I expect to see a bunch of shoots this year from the roots) and moved on to our Hollywood plum. This one is an early bloomer. We bought it as a two-year-old graft, and planted it two years ago, so it is now 4 years old. We got no fruit off of it last year, even though it bloomed beautifully and prolifically, because it was too cold while it was blossoming. I cannot remember whether we got a late frost or we just didn’t have pollinators flying because of the cold.

Thoroughly chastened.

The Monsieur Hatif plum received similar treatment. After this, I think I will restrict pruning to spring/summer after flowering for the stone fruits and see if we have better luck with them. This one also produced no fruit last year.

The blueberries and honeyberries we pruned lightly, taking out no more than a third of each bush, only the oldest or most congested branches. Next up…

The grapes.

If you are wondering why two grape vines are planted on such a small trellis I can only reply with Dr. Johnson, “Ignorance, Madam, sheer ignorance.”

It was even worse. We initially planted three there, and eventually dug out the middle one because there was just no way to keep them from getting hopelessly tangled.

We took a lot of bulk out this year. Leaving only three uprights on the one, and two horizontal cordons (I hope I am using the right terminology) on the other. I have no doubt they will still take over the area and try to engulf everything within a six foot radius. Grapes are a truly remarkable plant.

This havran quince is also now 4 years old. I think we will let it bear fruit this year if it has a mind (we pinched the blossoms the first two years). It has a nice structure, but a tendency to grow erratically with lots of shoots, many crossing into the center. Pruning is just a matter of cleaning the center out again.

And now the Braeburns.

These two have been loyal and heavy producers for the last 5 years or so. They already have their final shape, such as it is (when we planted them I didn’t even know you were supposed to prune apples) so now it’s just a matter of thinning the shoots and congested fruiting spurs in the winter, and then cutting some of the exuberant growth back in the summer.

Not bad for two hours work.