Fruit tree pruning on the right cycle
An old apple tree that nobody has touched in fifteen years cannot be fixed in one afternoon, and anybody who says otherwise is about to hurt it. It can be brought back over a few seasons, and it is worth doing.
- Method
- Thinned, center opened, height staged over seasons
- Outcome
- Reachable fruit, air through the tree
Before you book this one
When you need this
- The tree fruits heavily one year and barely at all the next
- The fruit is small, high up, and out of reach
- The middle of the tree is a thicket you cannot see through
- Water sprouts are shooting straight up out of the main limbs
- You have inherited an old orchard tree with the house
What we do
- Deadwood, crossing limbs and the worst of the congestion out first
- The center opened so light and air reach the fruiting wood
- Height brought down over a few seasons rather than in one cut
- Water sprouts thinned rather than all removed, because the tree needs some
- Timing chosen for the species instead of for our schedule
What to know
- We will not take an overgrown fruit tree back to size in a single visit. Remove too much at once and it answers with a forest of shoots and no fruit
- We do not spray anything. No pest treatment and no feeding, those are not services we offer
- A tree that is rotten through the main scaffolds is not a pruning job and we will tell you
A fruit tree is the one tree in most yards that people genuinely have a relationship with. It came with the house, somebody's grandmother planted it, and it is either producing a hundred pounds of apples nobody can reach or it has quietly stopped producing at all.
Both of those are usually the same problem. The center has filled in, so light no longer reaches the wood that actually carries fruit, and all the productive growth has migrated to the outside and the top. The fix is to open the middle, take the height down in stages, and thin so the tree can put energy into fruit rather than into holding up a thicket.
The reason it takes more than one visit is that a fruit tree reacts hard to heavy pruning. Take a third of it in one go and next summer you get a wall of vertical water sprouts and no crop. Take a sensible amount, come back the following season, and within two or three years you have a tree with an open middle, fruit you can reach off a short ladder, and an actual crop every year rather than every other year.
Questions people ask about this
When should fruit trees be pruned?
For most apples and pears in this climate, late winter into early spring while the tree is still dormant is the main window, and a lighter tidy in summer can help control size. Stone fruit like cherries and plums are usually better done in dry weather rather than in the wet, because the wounds are more open to disease. We will tell you what your particular trees want, and sometimes that means booking for a different month.
Can you fix a really overgrown apple tree?
Yes, but over about three seasons rather than in one visit. The first year we take out the dead wood, the worst crossing limbs and enough of the middle to get light in. The next year we bring the height down and thin what responded. By the third you have a tree with a shape that holds. Doing all of that at once would trigger so much regrowth that you would be further behind than when you started.
Do you spray or feed the trees?
No. We do not spray anything and we do not feed trees, and both of those are deliberately not services we offer. What we can do is tell you what we are seeing while we are in the tree, whether that is a canker, a borer, or simply a tree carrying more wood than it has root system to feed, and point you at whoever is the right person for that part.
Related work
Have a certified arborist look at it
Tell us what the trees are doing and we will come out, walk the property with you and write it up. The visit is free, it takes about 20 to 30 minutes, and you get an itemized estimate you can hold on to.
Call or text
(360) 842 7433Washington contractor licence WARRIBT777DF. Licensed, bonded and insured. Verify on LNI.wa.gov.ISA Certified Arborist PN 368801AEstimates are scheduled Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm Pacific.