Welcome!
We have behind me a work of art. One that most people would prefer not to
have.
What's wrong with this tree? This tree is completely overgrown.
It has proliferation of small twiggy branches everywhere and it has a lot of
bigger branches that are crossing over, twisting around each other, and are
generally too crowded. How did it get this way?
I think the main reason is that lack of attention and the genetics of the tree.
Crab apples are prone to poor branching and poor growth structure.
This is an older tree, it hasn't been selected like the newer ones are.
Plus, it's been poorly pruned. If you look up there you can see very
abrupt cut off ends where somebody made a heading cut or a sheering cut right
between two branches or two buds such that the tree was not able to grow so all the
buds behind that cut broke and grew and you have a competitive mess.
Now if we let the Darwin-ian struggle take place, this whole tree would eventually
die, but we don't want that to happen because it has very nice blooms.
What else is wrong with it? It has a lot of fruit and that fruit in
the fall falls on my car and on the driveway and gets tracked in the house
so it's not fun.
So what are we going to do about this tree?
Let me count the ways: One, we want to get rid of the smallest
stuff, stuff that simply we can't see the overall structure so we can see what are
the major cuts we have to make. So I want to take out some of the real
tiny branches that obscure the whole picture kind of like a haze.
And then after that, then I want to go in and decide what are the major cuts I make?
I don't want to make a lot of diddling cuts on branches that later on I decide
that I need to take off. So I want to make - clear out the small
stuff first, then come in and make the major cuts afterwards.
[soft music playing]
So what do we have now? Still a mess.
But, a little bit more about it - now that I've cleaned out the small stuff I can see
what major cuts I can make to open this up a little bit more.
And I want to emphasize why we're opening it up: one, to reduce the number of
fruiting branches on this. And two, the amount of twigs and branches
here that are too close together reduces the amount of sunlight coming into the
tree and so it reduces the amount of photosynthesis going to the branches.
There's too little of a good thing to go around to all the branches.
So if we cut off the branches that are too crowded, we use the light more effectively
for the ones that remain. So what am I going to take out?
This one right here. It goes and cuts through these other
branches so if I take this off I'll probably be a lot better off.
And notice I always want to cut close to the main branch, I want to make a thinning
cut here, but not too close. I don't want to make a flush cut.
I don't want to make it too far out so I leave a stub.
So this is pretty good and it's pretty close.
[music playing]
Okay, I've made a few cuts, I've opened this up some, there's more light coming
through, and there's fewer branches that are going to be carrying fruit that will
drop all winter long. So I've improved it from that standpoint.
Am I done? No, no.
There's a whole rest of the tree that needs to be done.
And even then, once I prune it, I may need to go back and look and see if there's
some other cuts. It's kind of like a work of art in a way.
It's an iterative process where you make some major cuts, you clean things up, and
go back and look at and access the whole tree and decide are there other things to
do? For example, this mess right up here.
Okay, this was a result of a lot of poor pruning practices in the past.
And it's very difficult to try and correct those and I've made a lot of extra cuts
and wounds that I really wouldn't like. And maybe when I get done with the rest of
the tree, I want to just cut it off here. I won't know until I prune the rest of the
tree. One other thing I want to emphasize is
that, don't ever prune with an aluminum ladder next to power lines.
It's um, your career may be rather shortened by doing that.