Why I Prune Fruit Trees

If you have a fruit tree, you should prune it. I have learned this through personal experience. The first time we pruned my grandparents trees we had a bunch of family come and help. We were only planning on staying for one semester (ha ha, so much for plans) and it had been a few years since the trees had been pruned.

I figured I would learn a lot. I was totally shocked when my family members started asking my opinion on which branches to cut. I quickly realized how clueless I really was. When we didn’t end up moving out at the end of the semester I decided I would figure out how to take care of the trees.

The thing was that the fruit production drastically improved after the pruning, regardless of the quality of pruning. One of the older plum trees had gotten huge but wasn’t producing fruit so we cut it back quite a bit. That summer the thing was loaded with more plums than we knew what to do with.

I posted a few months ago about this apple tree that we pruned heavily last year. It was one we had kind of missed that first year. It had been neglected for a few years because the fruit we were getting was not stellar. But once we gave it a really good haircut it was almost a night and day difference. Read the post if you want to see pictures.

That is pretty much how it goes for all of the trees we have. They just seem to do better when we give them attention. Especially if they have been ignored for a while.

Once I started learning some things about pruning I realized that my grandparents hadn’t always done it right. For example they sometimes left a large stump when they cut branches. You are usually supposed to cut branches as close to the trunk as you can get them so they can heal over.

I don’t blame them my grandparents for not knowing how to prune trees. They didn’t have the advantage of YouTube and Google like I do. The interesting thing is that I the trees survived even with the bad cuts. Some of them are not doing too well but most of those are over 20 years old which is longer than most fruit trees are expected to be in their prime.

When I started writing this post I was planning on doing a “tutorial” of all the things you need to know to prune trees. Then I quickly realized that I am not actually qualified to do that.

What I am qualified to tell you is that if you prune your trees, even imperfectly, they will be better off than if you don’t prune them because you are worried about messing them up.

The year I tried pruning on my own I really started noticing the trees growing in neighbors yards. Some were prettier than others. Two of my neighbors each had a beautiful apricot tree in his front yard. I asked each of them on separate occasions what his method of pruning was. This is a paraphrase but both of them basically said, “every spring I go out and cut as much off as I think I can without killing it, and it just turns out that way.” I don’t know what their apricots are like but the point I got from it was that pruning was good for the tree.

There are a lot of people who have posted about pruning that can tell you more about your specific type of fruit tree and your location than I can. Doing research helps a lot. But even if you don’t have time to do that you should go outside and look at your tree or trees. You will probably be able to see what needs to go and what doesn’t. Your trees will thank you.

I was going to end there, but I can’t ignore the life lesson in this principle. As a parent there are a lot of things that my kids want to do but I can’t let them. It is my job to set boundaries and make sure they stay inside them, for now. I might not always do it right, but even doing it wrong is better than not doing it. A lot better. Kids are like fruit trees. They produce better fruit if you give them attention and don’t let them do whatever they feel like doing whenever they feel like doing it. It might be more work that way, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Thanks for reading.