Fruit trees

The new property came with 14 fruit trees and 4 nut trees, all of which were in need of some serious pruning. I read up on pruning techniques for all kinds of fruit trees, and decided the best option was to treat these as old fruit trees in need of renovation, which means pruning for shape and for ease of future fruiting, and not think about this years' harvest.

Found this nailed to a beam in the shop.

Here are the fruits:
Stella cherry (red, sweet)
Rainier cherry
Montmorency cherry (sour cherry - for pie!)
Bartlett Pear
Fuji apple
Gala apple
Jonagold apple
Red Gravenstein apple
Peach 'Frost' (small, sometimes won't ripen in a cold summer, but very hardy)
2 Italian plum
Santa Rosa plum (oriental)
Satsuma Japanese plum (oriental)
Yellow Egg (European) plum

Apples, cherries, pear, and peach along the driveway out front. Plum trees are behind the house.

The Montmorency cherry is 75% dead, and the Gala apple and Frost Peach both have bad canker infections on most of the main scaffold branches which might require some pretty severe pruning (like, to the ground...). I'll see how they do this year and may replace them.


Most of them looked like this; tons of water shoots, hanging and dead branches, and way too many branches shading out he center of the tree.

Much better when pruned back to shape.