Hi, I'm JayDee Gunnell, one of the garden
experts at USU Extension.
And I'm going to talk to you today
about how I approach spring pruning.
There's a crab apple here behind me
that hasn't been pruned for a few years.
So when I walk up to a tree, even with all my training,
it's a little bit intimidating to start in the spring.
I'm a little rusty from the winter.
So the first thing I do is I look
for what I call the triple Ds--
the dead, diseased and dumb branches.
Dead and diseased are easy to find because they're
dry and brittle.
If the branch snaps or breaks, it's dead.
If it's pliable, then it's alive.
There's not a lot of dead tissue on this branch structure
except for here on the trunk.
You can see we have a little bit of winter sun damage.
There's not a lot you can do with this except
give the tree time.
Try to avoid the pruning sealants
because that will just trap in moisture
and some of the pathogens that are around already.
So the best thing to do on something like this
is to wrap young trees with a white reflective trunk wrap
during the wintertime.
And then, this time of year, you can remove it.
But let's get back to the dumb branches.
Dumb branches are water sprouts, like these branches
that are growing vertically through the canopy.
They'll just shade the whole tree out,
and they'll crisscross with other branches.
Suckers-- they're here at the base of the tree.
These you'll remove down as far as you can under the ground,
because these are coming off the roots.
So those are dumb branches that need to come out.
So once you've removed the suckers, we'll come in.
And, actually, it's going to be easier with my hand shears.
You remove some of these vertical water sprouts,
cutting those off right at the point of connection,
trying not to do damage.
Any branches that go through the canopy,
they'll need to come out because they're crossing.
Here's a branch here that you can see that's dry and brittle.
This is a dead branch.
That's a gimme.
It comes out.
So any time you have branches that are co-dominant or right
above each other, you'll select one
that's going the direction you want and remove the other.
So this one that's coming up through the center I'm
going to remove, allowing that tree to go out and up.
And I'll just do that throughout the whole tree,
and cleaning up, making sure that I'm not
taking more than about 20%, 25% at any given year.
Otherwise, that tree will regrow really hard,
and give you growth that you don't want.
So we'll pan away and come back when we're done,
and we'll show you the finished result.
So here you can see the finished version of our pruning job.
You can see we removed any of the dumb branches that
are crisscrossing in the middle, anything hanging down,
the water sprouts through the center,
any of the co-dominant branches that were
competing with one another.
But that's the way I approach a tree-- looking
for those dumb, diseased branches or dead.
That's the hardest part, is starting.
The second hardest part is stopping.
So make sure you walk away when you've
got about 20%, 25% of the tree pruned.