Pruning Apple Trees. 1.26.22

 January can be a good time to prune apple trees.  They are not actively growing or producing apples, so we get a good look at their structure.  Many other farming / gardening jobs are on hold although there is always something.

My apple pruning goals:  Try to keep the branches at a height that won't be easy for deer to reach, but I can reach without a ladder.  My fruit goals are to have various varieties ripening from summer through fall and into early winter.  Not bushels of fruit at a time, but rather bowls at a time.

This is what started as minidwarf Liberty Apple, now at 22 years old has overgrown some of the dwarfing effect of the rootstock.  I bent higher branches horizontally to let them fruit within reach.  I cut off all vertical shoots, a few buds after their origins.   In front of Liberty is the columnar North Pole, with McIntosh flavors but larger and sweeter.  I just cut the top and prune side spurs to keep them about
a foot long.  Those were a few weeks ago.

Another NorthPole.  Both North Pole apple trees are on minidwarfing M27 rootstock, which gives small,  very slow growing tree but keeps the size manageable and maintenance easy.

Also Golden Sentinel.   Also columnar.   It's had some bark problems, seem to be healing but I'm leaving two healthy looking lower shoots in place as potential replacements.  If the existing top doesn't produce this year, I'll cut it off and let the vigorous young shoots take over.  I think it's on M9 dwarfing rootstock, but I forget.

I also pruned the Jonagold and Winecrisp - which has grafts of Sweet-16, Fameuse, and Duchess of Oldenberg.  Mostly, remove high vertical shoots, open up the canopies a little, remove long willowy branches that, when weighed down with apples, bend to easy deer heights.   Stubby branches don't bend so easily so are relatively safer from Bambizilla.   I pruned the dwarf multigraft that has Sutton Beauty, Airlie Redflesh, Liberty, Baldwin, and Prima.  I'm debating removing more of the Airlie Redflesh because those get too much scab.  The star of that tree is the ancient variety, Sutton Beauty (discovered about 1848).  Prima is a good disease resistant variety so I'm curious about how that will do.

There is one more apple tree to prune in this group, a large multigraft with Akane, Summerred, Fuji (Beni Shogun early variant), some Pristine shoots (early early very good disease resistant, sparkly good flavor), more Jonagold, and a red flesh from Home Orchard Society that might be descended from the variety Grenadine.  

Then there will be the three front yard apple trees, and that's all.  I very good that Im this far along on the apple tree maintenance.