How to Prune an Apple Tree!

What's going on YouTube? It's James Pergione coming to you live from Jersey. Today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite winter activities and one that you've been asked about in the comments, pruning. So let's go. Today we're going to be going over and focusing on the techniques necessary to prune an apple tree. Before I get into the specifics, I want to tell you guys not to feel overwhelmed. There are some books out there and even some literature online that turns pruning into almost like a master science that only the pros can do. But I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be confusing. Although there are a few important things that can greatly increase your fruit production. Now you may be asking yourself, James, why should I prune my apple tree? What's the purpose? Well, the most important reasons for me is first, by pruning, you're going to remove those dead and injured branches. Also, pruning, you're going to remove those thin and branches that are kind of crowding, reducing the airflow that's going to get into your tree and also the light. The third thing is you're going to actually form the shape of the tree that you want. And fourth, by pruning, you're actually going to increase fruit production and flower production. There are some general rules and techniques to follow when it comes to pruning, but overall, in my opinion, pruning is more like an art form than a science. We're going to go over those techniques in just a bit, but first I want to tell you the best time to prune. The best is in the dormant season. Right now, in my favorite, it's mid-January. Everything is all dormant. The trees have obviously gone dormant, but that means the pests are also dormant too. There are two main techniques gardeners will use when pruning. The first one is known as pruning to a central leader. Like you can see this tree here, it's got one main trunk or central leader going right up. This is the common way to do it for apples and pears. I've got another pear tree over there that you can even see it better on. Let me show you that real quick. So right over here, I'll show you the Moonglow pear tree, also pruned to the central leader. In pear trees, you prune even less than apple trees, but you can see here one main leader going down. And to give you guys a good contrast of the difference, I'll move you right over to a peach tree. And this is the other technique that I'm going to be talking about. And this is pruning to an open center. It doesn't have that one main leader going up to the top. This is more, obviously, of an open center. And if you want even a bigger contrast, take a look at Paul Gauchy's trees. I'll throw a picture in here or maybe a short little clip. His are really an open center. And due to the weight, they even weigh down on the sides branches. Whichever technique you choose, that's up to you. I've gone both ways. Let me show you an apple tree I have in the side garden that's pruned with an open center. So over on the side garden, I've got a stamen wine sap apple. This one I've pruned to more of an open center. And this tree is doing real well for me. So it's got about three or four main branches, but it's got a lot of stuff to prune here too. So whatever method of pruning you go with, that's your choice, whether a central leader or open center. But there are a few principles you want to make sure you stick with in order to get a good, healthy production. When pruning, one thing that's so important is having the right tools for the right job and you want them to be sharp. Nice, clean cuts. Any small branches, I like to use a small pair of pruners like this. These are my Felco. You guys have seen that I always use them, but I use them so much they're getting a little dull on me and I haven't sharpened them. So these ones just won't do. Fortunately, I had someone send me some pruners for free. They wanted me to try them out. They're a good price range too, up on Amazon. So I figured, hey, I'd give them a go. We'll try them today. The Sensei pruners. So like I said, sharp is important. That's why I wanted a fresh one or a sharpened one. Let's do a cut with it. So this is a good size branch right here to cut with your pruners. I like to cut as close as I can to the main stem. One just flush cut. Looks like a pretty good clean cut. So we'll keep going. And anything that's too big to cut with the pruners, you don't want to push it either. You're going to want to cut with a nice handsaw. I prefer a Japanese handsaw. Nice and sharp one. You don't want to use any lopers. The lopers are going to crush the fibers in the wood and that's something you definitely don't want. So let me show you one of the branches I'm going to cut with this handsaw. This apple tree right next to me is mainly pruned to a central leader. This one right here. But there's a big branch in here that I need to take out. And I really want to show you guys this to empower you and make sure that you're not afraid to take out some big things. One thing to note is you don't want to take out ever more than one third of the tree. That'll cause you to get a lot of suckers, a lot of those water sprouts, which is something you don't want. Ideally you wouldn't want to cut out a branch this big, but that's just what happens as the trees grow. You want to do a lot of your big cutting when the tree's younger and establish its form mostly when it's young. So what I'm going to do is cut this tree here and try to make sure that I can hide the cut. I want to make it like this tree never knew that there was even a cut there. So this branch here actually is moderately heavy. And if it falls cutting like this, I may just peel some of the bark down. So there's a certain kind of cut you can do to prevent this. Let me show you. I know this whole branch is coming out. I want to cut it down here. But like I said, if I cut it down there, the weight of that can actually cause that to peel. That's not what I want. So first I'm just going to do a cut just this top here just to remove a lot of the weight. So now that I cut all that weight off, I'll be able to just come through. And sometimes you can cut the bottom side, but I don't think it's going to be necessary here. You can just come through and cut straight down. Not worry about that peel. As you can see, no peeling out the bottom. Nice clean cut. And you don't want to leave any stubs. Some of you guys were probably thinking when I was doing that, oh no, oh no. But look at it now. You can see how much that's opened it up. And the main purpose of pruning and what the main word I want you guys to focus on when pruning is arranging. That's what we're doing. We're arranging the branches and we're arranging everything so as to get light and air to all the leaves. We don't want any leaves that don't get any light or any of the fruit in the future. And we also don't want any leaves touching each other. So that's a lot of what we're going to be doing when pruning, just arranging. So let me show you one right here. For example, here, this branch is crossing over another branch. What's going to happen with that is you're going to have leaves touching and you're going to actually have this branch down here get no light. So we've got to take some of that out. So now you may be wondering, well, what am I going to take out, James? How do I even get started if my tree's a mess? Your tree looks a little cleaned up. So first, when you walk up to the tree, just take a minute, take a look at it and get a feel for it. And don't just look at it like it's one big giant mess, but focus your attention on the branches you want to keep. That's first and foremost. Focus on the branches you want to keep and then take out anything else and it'll reveal itself to you. So I know that I'd like to keep this main branch here. I really like this one coming off here. So I'm going to want to take off this branch down here. This way it'll open up that way and over here. So I want to take this branch off right here. I'm going to take these under ones because I know those aren't going to get light. I'll leave that. I'm going to take this right here. You can see now how that section was opened up. Now that we've got this here, this is going to be blocked by this. So I'm going to take that branch out next. This one is also growing on the underside. We'll take that. This one's growing on the outside direction here, but in the future this one might cover it. So I'm just going to take it out as well. Don't be afraid to take out too much. Don't be afraid to make a mistake. Like I said, it's an art form. The choices I make to prune might be different than yours, but as long as you're focusing on getting as much light to the leaves to increasing airflow, overall it's going to help increase your production because pruning itself is a stimulant. So I made these initial cuts. I wanted to keep this branch originally, but after taking a step back, I noticed it's just a little too close to this one. So I'm going to do what Paul Gauci talks about a lot. He says, take out the centers. So by taking out this center branch here, you'll see how much light I'm going to open up. See that? It's like a breath of fresh air. It really opens things up. And when I'm done with the prune cuts, I throw them on a tarp or something that I could just grab the tarp and throw in the back of the truck because I don't chop and drop this. It's not even necessarily for me to really chop and drop because I'll just bring it to the dump. And then when I'm at the dump, I can pick up wood chips. They have them there, or I can get wood chips delivered to me. The wood chips are a lot easier to deal with than branches and stuff sticking up out of the ground. Just a personal preference. With just those two main cuts, you can see how much the trees opened up. It's almost like a breath of fresh air. And that's what it feels like when you cut the right one. So I'm going to show you guys exactly where I cut them. I have to cut right on the collar. Some people will tell you to cut further up, but I cut right on the collar. I want to almost hide my cut. I want to make it look like there's never actually even been a cut. Because we want to increase that airflow, I want to make sure I'm getting rid of any branches that are also in the center of the tree that's going to decrease that airflow. And any of these little water shoots or things that are growing towards the center, I want things growing outwards. And one of the reasons I choose to go with this, you know, single trunk or central leader method is to save space. I'm in such a small area in this food forest. And if I went for all the open centers, I just wouldn't have the space in here. When you've got a branch like this, they want to just cut back a little bit. When you do cut it back, you want to do what's known as cutting back to an outer bud. So if I cut back right here, we're going to want to cut it at a 45 degree angle, about a quarter inch or so above a bud, just like that. And this is above an outer bud. And what I mean by outer bud is this bud here is facing out from the tree. So as it grows, it's going to grow out in that direction. We're on another apple tree over here. And a good thing to know is where the fruit's going to be. The fruit is going to be on these little things we call spurs. And the spurs are going to be nice and velvety and fat after about mid-autumn and late winter and going into spring. That's how you'll be able to identify them. So there may be some branches that you want to just cut back to the fruit spur. So now I'm going to prune this tree, clean it up, and talk about what I'm doing a little bit to give you guys a better understanding. So first thing you should look at, I should have mentioned it before, is any injured disease branches or anything. Look, this right here, this is injured. This is a bad branch. So we're going to want to cut that out right away. Let me cut it here just to start, although I might take it back further in the future. Again, like I said, I want to step back, take a look, and decide what branches I want to keep. Since I'm going for a central leader here, this is going to be my central leader. This branch, it looks like it should be coming, is going to have to come out because I have to decide whether I want this one or this one. These ones are just too close. So some decisions are going to need to be made. Looking at it, if this comes out, I'll remove any crossing over I had there. That'll allow this branch to get bigger, and then I'll open up plenty of space. So that's what I'm going to choose to do. Let me get my saw out for this and make the cut. I made the cut here, but one thing to note, I made a big mistake. I didn't look first, and I nicked the tree. You really don't want to do that. You don't want to cause any more damage, anything to the tree if you don't have to. So that was a bad mistake. Right over here, we've just got too much going on again, so something's got to come out here. What did we just say before? We take out the centers. That cleans things up a lot, so we're going to do that again. Take out the center. Now it's starting to clean up, and I can already feel the airflow. So another thing to note is, just like a Christmas tree, you want the higher branch to be shorter than the bottom branch. So your lower branch should be your longest branches. Let me just take a look at this, and I'll notice this is going up a little too much. To encourage this branch to grow over to this way more, I'm going to take it down to this top fruit spur that's face to an outward bud. Have it grow this way. And over here, it's just too gnarly, too messed up. Let me take a look at what I want to take out to clean up some of the area. Again, I'm going to take out this center. I can see right away. If I take all this out, it'll open up all this to grow out, and this as well. So let me take this center branch out here. One thing you want to do is hold the branch you're going to be cutting when you're cutting it so it doesn't just fall down and cut anything on you. It'll help you to stabilize your cut better. So a lot of those cuts I just made, they were kind of tough cuts because they weren't coming off the main branch. They were coming off side branches. This one here, it's coming off the central leader. When I cut ones off the central leader, I have to cut right to the collar on the collar line instead of leaving any stub. I don't want to leave any stub and have little water shoots coming out. So I want to cut on that collar and try to make it so you can't even see a cut after I'm done. So as you can see here, that's going to be straight down. That should heal over real nicely. One thing to note is if you guys plan on doing some grafting, make sure you keep some scion wood stored for the grafting or make sure you keep some wood left on an area that you're going to be grafting into in the future. Now I'm just going to go through and make a lot of the other cuts and just clean up the tree. All this center stuff I want to take out. I don't really like anything growing on the central leader because I like max airflow. Even if they're going to be little pieces of fruit, that's all right. I just want that air. Now on these outer buds here, I'm going to all shorten them because I got to come walking by and everything. So we'll take them down to an outer bud at a 45 degree angle. Here too, look how close these are getting. For now, let me shorten these up. I got some fruiting spurs right there, so I'll prune to the as well as over here. Now up here we've got another instance where these are kind of getting close here. Usually I would just kind of take out the central leader, but it looks like it's got some nice fruiting spurs. I'm going to take it right to the top where I see the last fruiting spurs. This one's got some fruit. Cut that out. This one's pointed up and towards the back. Cut that out. This branch here is going down. Water shoot with no fruit. Take all that off. That one came off on its own. Take this out. Just step back. I can see here, I'll take all this out, growing backwards. Here's an instance here where I said the higher branches up should be taller. That's not what's happening here. This branch here is not going to get any light. We're taking it right out. We'll keep this one and cut it back to a fruit spur. Same thing with this. We'll cut this back to this fruit spur up here. You can see the tree is starting to take more of a form and a shape, and you're going to be able to have better airflow. Starting to come together. You can see I got a mess over here as opposed to how much more cleaned up and stuff it is here, although I want to take some of this and that, so I need to make some decisions over here. I said it many times. I'll say it again. Taking out the centers isn't a bad thing to do. The center right here, once I take this center out, we're going to have this growth coming to go both ways. That felt good doing. Again, prune into those spurs, the fruiting spurs, and prune into the fruiting spurs again. This growth back here has got some spurs on it, some fruity ones, but I'll leave that. Again, some of these are just a little too crowded, even though it looks like it might have some fruit, it's a little too crowded. This one here is growing backwards towards the center of the tree, so I'll remove that. Now the tree is really starting to take form and shape, looking a lot nicer in my opinion. Take off some of these lowers and take off these actually. Now I need to make some decisions up here. It just looks really messy, so I'll take a step back and I'm going to want to have that central leader. It looks like we have a good amount of fruit up here with all the spurs, so I'm going to take out anything growing towards the center. This one's growing out, so I like that. I'll take this back to here. Right here, this one's growing towards the center as well. This one's coming out nicely. I'm going to shorten these, it's just getting too tall. Again, growing towards the center. I'll prune this one to an outward bud, get it going out that way. This looks like it's going to be my central leader, so we'll top it to that spur. Then this one we're going to take down to this outside bud here to encourage it to come outwards. As we step back, we can see we took a good amount off, but to me it looks a lot cleaner. This is something that could actually, in the future, we're going to try to encourage the growth coming this way. I could possibly want to take maybe just a little more out up here because it is getting a little condensed, but I see a lot of fruit in there. Sometimes it's hard to take it out because you want to see the fruit, but I do notice this. We'll take this out up top here because I'm going to encourage the growth coming this way. When you're cutting towards an outward bud like this, you want to cut at a 45-degree angle. The reason you want to do that is so it sheds water better. If you cut it flat, the water's just going to sit on there. It could rot. You want it to shed water off to the side. One thing I probably should have mentioned earlier, but if you have any suckers coming up, those come off the root. You want to just get rid of those immediately. This is a sucker coming out of the ground, which is coming from the rootstock. The rootstock is different than the top, so we want to cut that out as soon as we can. What we're really doing is arranging the branches in a pattern that the leaves are going to get light and that all the trees are going to get nice airflow going through it. Just by pruning, we're going to be stimulating the growth. I hope you guys took away from the video just how to do it and that it's not hard. It doesn't have to be confusing. You can make a mistake. It'll grow back next year. It's not like pruning grapes, which you really have to have a specific method in order to get a good amount of fruit. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you do, hit the like button. Hit the subscribe button. Share it with your friends. We'll be coming out with more videos soon. That great pruning method. See you in the next one.