Fruit tree pruning is a winter garden chore. A lot of people seem to think that you do nothing in the garden all winter long. No, that is not true. On this beautiful sunny brisk day, we went into the garden to make sure our fruit trees are properly pruned so they will be happy when things warm up in spring. Pete came through here a couple of weeks ago, with the tractor to make sure the snow was cleared enough to let us have access to the fruit trees now. It is truly amazing how much this patch of land will transform over the space of the year.
There are 5 fruit trees in our garden enclosure of 1/3 acre here in Elk Washington. The ones we are pruning today are the Bouch Pear Tree, the Red Haven Peach tree, and 3 kinds of apple trees; Honeycrisp, King & Macintosh.
The Bouch Pear tree was planted in 2018 and had only a handful of small-sized fruit at first and slowly the harvest has increased in size and amounts. Now, the fruit is full size and we are able to put away pears in the pantry for dessert all winter long. This past year it decided to go to town producing lots of pear for us and shooting branches straight up with quite a few intertwining branches tangling up in the middle. So, you can see that a lot of pruning will need to be done.
Our Red Haven Peach tree was planted in 2020 and she produced fruit the very first year. These peaches are so juicy that you need to stand over a sink to eat them.
On to the Apple Trees…
The Macintosh Apple is our old-timer that was planted in 1990. The King and Honey Crisp Apple Trees were planted in 2019. This year the snow weighted down the branches enough to cause breakage in all of them. So, the fruit tree pruning was more extensive.
