FRUIT TREE PRUNING TIPS

hey folks its Josh Stoney Ridge farmer spring is finally in the air here in North Carolina where I live in the Piedmont of North Carolina we're starting to get a touch of that warm weather at that sixties and seventies where we have a sense of urgency now we've got to get out here and we've got a prune our fruit trees okay and this tree is a key for a pear tree so we're going to give you a basic run around here in the orchard and give you some ideas some basic thought processes on how we or I prune the fruit trees here on the farm we've got about sixty five fruit trees now here on the farm and I'll pick the camera up and show you we've got the beginnings of a beautiful wonderful orchard for our family to eat fruit off of for years to come this is for homesteading this is not for production this is for homesteading this is for making our own cider making our own vinegars making our own wine having fruit here on the farm for us to eat and plus when I ride down through here on the lawnmower I'm grabbing a delicious pear or a peach or an apple or plum it's awesome so come on along today and we'll show you a little bit of basic backyard fruit tree pruning all right that's fun [Music] so first things first let's talk about the trees okay now this is a pear tree right here and I'm going to show you the limbs that we don't want the things that we don't want just give you a basic rundown of information that you need to know for pruning your trees and this will pertain to pruning your trees in the winter in the late winter you can look at the trees now and tell that they're not even starting to bud this is the perfect time there are not a lot of pests and the risk for the tree getting some sort of infection or disease it's pretty low this time of year so as we look at the tree here you can see several branches that are growing inward we want to get rid of those and branches that are touching one another that will end up eventually rubbing one another those are not beneficial branches okay we also want to look at the angle at which these branches come out we don't want a very sharp angle we want the angle to be somewhere near a ninety degree angle the closer to a ninety degree angle the better off it will be so what you need to know is a wintertime pruning promotes growth and a summertime pruning [ __ ] growth so here we have an example of a tree with the branches coming off just like it should coming out to the side almost at a ninety degree angle this one's coming out nicely the central leader right here is growing good and if you go around the tree you can see that this branch right here may be a weak point but we'll have to see as time goes on when you're trimming major limbs off like this you need to be thinking is this limb shading the limb below it no it's not is this limb shading any limbs no is this limb shading any limbs well we've got a little bit of an issue here so if we got a little rot going on right here you can see that right there so I think we're going to take this guy out or at least cut this one back because this one is going to shade this limb and you can see the deer have damaged my trees a little bit here too now as you look at the tree further you can see that this is growing overtop of this guy and this one is growing inward we want to open the tree up and bring more light into this tree so that we have more for more light means more limbs means more fruit means a better growing tree and we want healthy trees these trees are all within two to three years old or within two to three years of planting coyotes there's coyotes back here so guys have been having a lot of trouble with coyotes lately that rooster crowing might have got him called in I got my pistol with me today we've been having some serious coyote problems they've been trying to get in the chicken coop at night the dogs are barking at them so I hear I'm there they're probably 300 yards away through the woods but anyway let's let's get back to it by the way a guy gave me this this holster it's from Cold War concealment it's a local company right here in North Carolina it's called Cold War concealment he makes custom holsters here I'll show it to you again who makes custom holsters this is a Smith & Wesson M&P 9-millimeter I like it you can do all kinds of custom colors anyway back to the fruit trees so there's several different schools of thought on trimming a tree there is a central leader method where one central leader goes up and then there's the open center method where you're trimming the tree back so that it is open in the middle and shoots off large limbs kind of curling up we really need to go to the orchard and have the orchard guy explain it to us but for now I just want to walk you through what I'm gonna do so if you're gonna trim your own fir trees or a couple tools that you're gonna need to take along with you we're gonna need this little guy right here it's a corona it's called a razor tooth saw and basically it's for getting your larger limbs I don't know that we'll need that today because our trees are fairly young and fairly new and also this is the corona brand and it's really really good this is the third pair that I own I keep one in the Gator I keep one in the truck I keep tools on the truck because you never know when you'll need this guy or this guy to get something out of your way on a farm Road so I keep the tools on the truck but this is a corona brand also and these guys are just farm essentials things to have I'll post links down below to these tools tried-and-true trusted this guy especially is a very trust tool here on the farm that thing is heavy heavy duty all right so let's get busy and I'll show you trimming a tree because that's what you're here for right all right let's examine this tree see these branches these low branches they're just no good for anything they're just energy sucking branches so we're going to go ahead and we'll get our cutters and we'll snip those off okay we're gonna cut back here see their growth rings right here and that's where the hormone is the growth hormone in the tree if you cut it here that is going to cause new growth if you cut it back here you get in that growth ring and you cut off that new growth now you're gonna think I'm scalping this tree but if you look here you can see there are three major branches one two three and they're all coming off at the correct angles that we want there's also another one here but this angle this crotch angle right here is just a little tighter than what you see here okay I'm gonna leave this guy this year and I'm gonna take this one out because this limb here will shade that limb so let's cut him out now with these apple trees I don't want a shoot shooting up to the sky here I'm gonna be able to pick my apples so we're gonna do a drastic cut right here and we're going to get rid of this guy we're gonna get rid of that central leader right there because I want this tree to bloom out like that okay so that I can walk all the way around it and pick my apples get rid of these little dudes now I'm gonna cut this one because the crotch angle is just way too tight okay I'm gonna cut him off all right then I'm gonna go right above this little growth ring area where the growth hormone is and I'm gonna cut right there boom I took that central leader off and we'll also get this guy right here now look at this tree it's really lopsided so let's go on and get in here and take that guy off and then this guy I think we'll be okay and then that's appropriately trimmed lopsided tree now here's an example of a pear tree that's just overcrowded look at this guy right here see how that's rubbing up against there we got to get rid of that it's just growing this actually comes up off and grows toward the inside so we want to get rid of this whole limb right here okay we want to cut him way back all the way back to here and these cutters really do a good job yeah get that guy out of there now see this guy he's crossing over - okay go ahead and get rid of this because it's rubbing right there and we want to get rid of any diseased or broken branches another point to make if you're going tree to tree and you don't want to spread disease it's a good idea to have a rag with you and basically you can take that rag or take a coffee cup and pour some rubbing alcohol in there and clean your clippers in between so clean your pruners in between trees if you suspect any disease because if you don't and it has blight on it you can move it from tree to tree to tree let's look at another tree look at how busy this tree is look at how many branches we have here we have a lot of growth in this tree and we don't need that much growth okay so we're gonna take out most of these lololo branches and we're gonna leave probably four or five of the major branches with the right crotch angle starting down low here get a little sniffing going on something you need to think about when you're doing your trees in your orchard is this is your tree and you have artistic freedom to make it grow however you want it to grow so if you wanted to grow out and go where you can do that you can do whatever you want to with your tree but you need to open up all these branches we're gonna have to take some out so we can open it up and promote growth and get the tree to grow the way we want it to grow there's no real wrong way but you'll learn over time what you did wrong and hopefully you'll learn from it so the next time you do your fruit trees you'll learn a little bit more now I'll trim my trees probably a little bit different then you'll trim your trees and a pro orchard guy will probably trim them a little bit different I suggest you go online and you watch a bunch of videos ok pile all that knowledge before you go out and you cut your fruit trees take yourself some notes and get out there and work and have some fun enjoy your life be outside it's beautiful out here today our beautiful orchard and I'm really happy to share it with you guys so the major take-home messages here are when you trim trim the ones that have the sharp crotch angle you're shooting for a 90 degree almost crotch angle if something is really tight it's gonna make a weak spot and that branch is gonna crack and break at some point get the crisscross growth out all that criss-crossing growth anything that's touching any inward growth you want to get rid of that inward growth if you have to cut the top out of the main leader the central leader of the tree be sure you leave about that much about 3 buds on it so that in the springtime or in the summertime it starts to grow outward like that so that's it you want to have a beautiful orchard make it your own get out there and trim your trees get out there and trim your bushes make your place look beautiful do something that'll make you proud I'm gonna get busy I got about three hours worth of trimming to do in about 20 minutes worth of sunlight left time to get busy guys thanks a lot I hope you learned a little bit be sure you clean your tools in between your trees click the like button subscribe to the channel if you're not already subscribed and if I see a coyote I'm going to leave the camera rolling and I'm gonna bust his butt cuz we got coyote problems here on the farm thanks a lot guys thanks be sure you subscribe to the channel for not already to subscribe click the little bell down there and share this on social media it will really help the channel out it'll help me grow alright thanks for coming to the Stoney Ridge whoa during break here at sweet that's way supposed to be stone Tyrion whoa