Renovating Established Trees

by Doug
(in his garden)

When renovating an established fruit tree, there are several steps to take and several things to understand.

The first thing to understand is that the tree got into this state over several years and it’s going to take you several years (3-5) to bring it back to what you want the tree to look like. A severe one-time pruning is going to remove too much wood and leaf surface and send your tree into shock. Plan it out and understand it’s real gardening here - not something you do immediately.

The second thing to understand is that your tree is a living entity and you have to treat it as such by giving it the care and attention it needs. This means while you’re whacking away at the branches, you have to make sure it has all the water and food it needs to thrive. You’re going to stress this tree - make sure your growing conditions don’t stress it further.

You have to have some sense of the shape you’re trying to create. If you remember the video - you now know that a heading cut will create one kind of growth while a thinning cut will create another response from the tree. Which cut you choose will determine how that tree is going to respond. And understand that sometimes the tree will fool you or will respond in a way you don’t expect. So do your kids so it’s all good. Try again.

Tree shape.

We want an open tree - where light can penetrate to every branch. So just as you were trying to create a series of branches around a central trunk with establishing a new tree - this is what you’re trying to bring an old tree back to.

In other words, you want branches to grow out from a central trunk equally spaced around the tree. 3-4 on each level and then a space and another 3-4 equally spaced but not above the lower ones. Think a spiral kind of arrangement. Think of looking down on the tree and trying to see which branches from above have to be removed to allow light to penetrate deeply into the tree.

Each tree is different - there is no “prune it like this” rule. It depends on how the tree grew and how it looks now.

But the key point is to look down from above in your imagination and give every branch a shot at sunlight.

Steps.

Again - this is a rough kind of thing but here are the basic steps.


Do all this pruning when the tree is fully dormant. There are some orchards and systems where mid-summer pruning is used to stimulate new growth but in this beginner case, we’re talking solely about pruning when the plant is dormant.

Remove all dead wood in year one. This can be done at any time and you’re going to find in an old tree that there’s likely a ton of that up there. Watch the tree in the summer and try to identify which branches you’d keep and which you’d take out to create sunshine on all remaining branches. Mark these branches to be removed. Keep thinking about this all summer.

Year two. Remove all watersprouts. These are branches that grow vertically along the length of branches. All of a sudden in the middle of a branch a sprout appears and grows straight up. In really old ignored trees, these can become major branches by themselves. If there are a lot of these - cut out half in year two and the other half in year three.

Year three - you now either have a fully “clean” tree without watersprouts or you’re about to remove the rest to give yourself a fully watersprout-less tree.

You’ve identified the branches that are going to be removed and the branches that will stay. So cut out 30% of the branches that are going to be removed. Take a few from all parts of the tree.

Every year for the next two years, you’re going to remove the other third of branches to slowly bring the tree back into shape and function. You’re opening up the tree to air and sunlight and you’re identifying the main branches to bear fruit. You’re removing new water sprouts and forcing the tree into shape.

After 3-5 years you have a tree with excess branches - that resembles an upside down bowl where the branches arc out and down so the tree is open to the sunlight.

I understand this may be difficult to imagine - and I understand you may hesitate to do some of these cuts. I'm about to start doing several of the overgrown apple trees in my own orchard in our new property (previous owners didn't prune at all - they are all overgrown and some are too old to save) and I'll be documenting this in video and pictures. I'll be uploading these over the next year or three as I do this so watch this space to get a full look at this process.