Hello! This is Jody Gale, county Extension
agent with Utah State University Extension Service.
Welcome to our website. Today we're going to give a little
demonstration about pruning techniques, tools, tree structure, and this will be
the first of a segment of video footage to give you a little bit of an idea of how
to prune a home orchard.
First off, let's talk a little bit about tools.
Any job is easier to do if you have the right tools.
Probably the first thing to do is have a good old pair of work gloves.
One of the most common tools we use is a pair of loppers.
Loppers come in many shapes and sizes, this is the kind not to buy.
This particular lopper has metal that bumps together right here, and they're
pretty hard on the elbows when you're doing a lot of pruning as you cut.
The loppers come together and make a banging action, it kind of jars your
elbows.
A better type of pruner is one like this. This has a little rubber bumper, this sits
right here next to the pruning blades, this little rubber bumper is very much
like a shock absorber on a vehicle. As you come crashing together, as you make
a cut, that little rubber bumper cushions the bump and makes it a lot easier to
prune. This particular type is a professional
pair of loppers, they have wooden handles that have very straight grain and they
tend to work out pretty well. Unfortunately they're fairly expensive.
Here's another pair that are very commonly available, again it has the little rubber
bumper here which is one of the big features to look for.
This particular one has metal handles, but because of the rubber bumper it still
cushions well and allows you to make the cuts.
This works really well for pruning limbs that are approximately, oh, on the small
side of a quarter inch up to maybe as big as an inch in diameter.
There are some loppers that have a gear mechanism that create a double cut effect
that give you a lot more leverage for cutting even larger limbs.
For making small cuts, a little pair of loppers works really well.
All of these styles that I'm demonstrating are bypass type loppers.
They work kind of like a pair of scissors do where the two blades come past each
other, this creates a cutting action and they have the curved blade which works
quite well.
This is another common type of hand loppers, this is called an anvil type.
The blade is straight, and it simply presses down against a flat surface here
creating a cutting action. These are okay, they tend to squash the
limbs when they cut them, but they work reasonably well.
Again they're referred to as kind of an anvil type.
So there's cutting tools, you don't need to have all of these types, but at least
one good pair of loppers, and some type of little hand sheers/hand loppers work
very well. Let's talk about saws for a few minutes.
Carpenter's saws are very different than pruning saws.
This is a pruning saw. It has a very curved blade, it doesn't
have to have a curved blade, but the teeth are very, very course.
A carpenter's saw, if you cut with a carpenter's saw, you tend to be cutting
downward. Having your work on a sawhorse in front
of you and creating a downward cutting motion.
Whereas when you're pruning, you're typically working overhead.
So if you're using a carpenter's saw you use the weight of your body pushing down
to create the cutting action. When you're using a pruning saw, you're
typically using the weight of your body pulling down.
So pruning saws typically cut when you pull them unlike a carpenter's saw which
cuts when you push them. So again a real common type of pruning saw
this is a straight - or it's not a straight blade, but it's a single blade.
Another pair that I have that I really quite like is a little pair of folding
uh, pruning saw. Again, has a curved blade on it, coarse
teeth on it, cuts when you pull. It's pretty handy to fold together and
stuff in your back pocket if you're working around a tree it makes it very
easy to kind of carry around. For larger jobs, just a standard old
bull blade. The teeth on a bull blade tend to be quite
coarse. This one has a little protecting plastic
cover on it that makes it easy if you're dealing with it so you don't accidentally
cut yourself. The pruning - this type of a bull saw is
good for the larger material that are three, four, five, six inches in diameter.
If you get anything bigger than that, you'll want to break out the chainsaw.
Last type of pruning tools to demonstrate, this is referred to as a pruning pole.
The mechanism here is the same as we've demonstrated, it has a bypass shear.
Only this one's on a long handle where you can reach up into a tree that's uh - where
limbs are a little distant and just simply pull the handle on this particular model
and it creates the cutting action with the head.
This one also has another mechanism where you can pull a string at the very end of
the handle where you can reach up quite far.
For the limbs that are a long distance away, here's another one that has
a mechanism here that you can actually expand out some distance and again it has
a similar mechanism of pulling the handle to cut and you can really reach up into a
tree. These also have a pruning saw blade that
you can hook onto the end of the head. You can use to create - to actually saw
or cut limbs that are quite a distance up, that are too big for the loppers to cut.
Other tools that are needed for pruning in the orchard are a typical ladder,
this ladder is not necessarily an orchard type ladder, but it serves a very good
purpose. This has a fiberglass frame, rated for 300
pounds, many of the higher quality ladders will be rated around 300 pounds.
This particular ladder is about 8 feet high which is good for working on many
semi-dwarf trees. A different style of ladder is available
for commercial orchard growers. It's basically a tripod type ladder, it's
all aluminum, the base is much larger, the legs are much wider in the back,
And then it has a single pole which is movable in and out on the back part of the
ladder in this area. They're much taller and they're a good
tool for pruning large commercial orchards - trees in large commercial
orchards and also for picking apples. So, a good ladder is a great resource
especially when the trees start to get a little size.
Earlier we talked about pruning poles, so this particular pruning pole is a good
resource, it has an adjustable height on it where the length can be extended out
and then as well as other tree varieties there's a little saw that can be fastened
on the end for saw type action. When trees get a little bit large this
becomes very handy for doing the pruning. Let me also point out this particular
piece of equipment, this is a picking pole.
These are designed for reaching up in a tree and picking a fruit in a manner like
this. There's a little rubber base in the bottom
so as the fruit is picked by these little teeth that tend to grab the fruit it will
drop down against this foam rubber reducing any bruising on it.
These are usually available with a wooden pole on it and I've obtained a very
heavy-duty pruning - or uh, painting pole. It has a long extension like this, you can
adjust it down and tighten it in. It becomes very handy for picking fruit
that gets to be way, way high. But by way of review, one of the very
purposes for pruning is to keep your trees from getting too large and too tall,
but these are tools that if you already have large trees, that can be used for
that type of purpose. Let me demonstrate how this large pole
pruner will work, these can reach up into the tops of trees quite a distance.
This particular pole pruner has a handle mechanism here which brings the blades
together in the top to make the cutting. So it works quite easily for reaching up
into tall trees. The old saying goes that if you can't
reach it to prune it, you can't reach it to pick it.
So a lot of care needs to be taken to consistently prune a little bit every year
to keep your trees from getting too tall.
The last thing I'd like to share with you is our website and a publication that's on
our website. This is entitled, 'Pruning the Home
Orchard'. We have a website for Utah State
University Extension service. We have many publications that are there
regarding home, yards, and gardens, orchard, and caring for fruit trees.
The website is extension.usu.edu That will bring up a homepage and on the
homepage is a tab for publications. Click on publications, there will be a
long list of them, a myriad of subjects that will come up, look for the subject
called horticulture and clicking on the
horticulture tab will take you to a section of some almost 300 fact sheets.
It's easy to get lost on websites, there is a little box where you can just do a
little search, put in the word pruning home orchard or pruning and it will take
you directly to these publications. Again, thank you for joining us today.
I'm Jody Gale on behalf of Utah State University Extension Service.