By Andrew Haupt
We finally borrowed an orchard ladder from a neighbor this week, so time to get after it on the pruning front. Even having gone through the pruning class recently, looking at our huge gnarly trees with the intent to manage them is daunting, what with major branches crossing every which way and shoots spewing completely vertical, out of reach of even a man on an tall ladder.
We made some progress, but it’s certainly slow going. We also tried to tie some of the more vertical branches down on a couple of the trees to train them at more of a 45 degree angle, and accidentally snapped a large one off of a pluot tree in the process. The good news is we didn’t really get any fruit last year so nowhere to go but up.
