Hello, I'm Jody Gale, extension agent with Utah State
University Extension Service.
Thank you for joining us for this continuous segment
of Pruning in the Home Orchard.
I'd like to talk a little bit about where fruit is produced
on the different tree species.
This is an Apple tree.
And it's important to know at what point in time that apples
are produced and the type of wood that apples
are produced on.
You can see that this limb has been pruned.
This particular darker colored wood
was the growth that occurred last year.
From this point down to this point
is the wood that grew the year before that.
Again, a cut would have been made to shorten
that segment in the past.
From this point down to this point,
with these buds scale scars, are the year before that.
Apples are only produced on wood that is two years and older.
So you can see that these are very small buds here.
These will not become apple buds this year.
This is two-year-old wood, and we have these young spurs
that are just developing.
Apples are produced on spurs.
So this is two-year-old wood.
This is a spur.
In another few weeks, this particular bud
will come out as an apple blossom.
Here is an area that is three years old,
and this spur is now a two-year-old spur.
This is where the apple is produced from the blossom that
will soon emerge.
You can tend to develop spurs, even
though you get vigorous growth.
This is one that's been shortened,
selecting some buds here, and this
may have an opportunity to try and develop spurs
to be future fruit wood.
It's particularly important, in pruning,
not to cut off these spurs on an apple tree,
because they become your fruit surface area.
If you remove these spurs, they don't grow back.
And this becomes your fruit crop,
so it's very important to be able to protect those spurs.
When you pick the apples in the fall,
instead of just simply pulling straight on the apple, which
will often break the spur off, you
want to twist the apple sideways so that it bends the stem.
And the stem of the apple will snap off from the bud
itself, protecting that area that will become
the continuation of the spur.
Sometimes, when trees are 25, or 30, even 40 years old,
these spurs may only be several inches long,
and they have produced apples every year
for a number of years.
And so it's important to know where the fruit is produced,
and what to prune away, and what not.
And spurs are something that need
to be protected, because that becomes your fruit crop.
Now let's talk about where peaches are produced.
Peaches are very different in their production system
than apples are.
This is the growth that grew the previous year
on the peach tree.
You'll notice the very burgundy color with a lot of green cast
to it.
You can see these very large buds on it.
This is the limb that grew from this point
to this point the previous season,
so this is one-year-old wood.
From this point here to this point,
this is the wood that grew the year before that, so making
this two-year-old wood, and then this branch here
would be three-year-old wood.
Notice, there's no buds on this branch,
which would become peaches.
There's no buds on this branch, which would become peaches,
representing two and three-year-old wood.
You only have these buds on the previous season's growth.
On an intact bud, you'll have one bud here
that will be a blossom, and on the other side,
will be a blossom with the bud in the center becoming
a new branch or a leaf.
So these are swelling vigorously.
This is an intact one here where you can see both buds present,
with the leaf bud, which will become in the middle.
So when you prune peaches, you want
to prune them in such a way that you take off
a lot of the previous year's wood,
promoting a lot of new growth for the coming year, which
represents your fruit crop.
Peaches are not a long lived tree.
Typically, they'll last between 15 to 20 years,
whereas apple trees are easily last between 35 years
and older.