The enjoyment of any tree’s fruit acts as a gift to someone that has demonstrated the willingness to carry out all the essential functions that are part of tree care. Pruning belongs on any listing of such essential functions.
Initial approach to pruning of one or more fruit trees
Always start with the lowest branches. Tree Care in Palo Alto will remove any branch that is dead or diseased. Remove the suckers, the small growths that have sprouted from the tree’s roots. Each of those has been stealing nutrients from the tall plant’s healthy and growing parts, those parts that contribute to the production of fruit.
Steps that should guide the pruner into interior section of branches
• Start by looking for long, vertical and straight limbs. Allow those to remain in place. Those are healthy, and display a potential, as bearers of fruit.
• Remove any limbs that have crossed over another limb.
• Remove any limb that appears headed in a downward direction.
When coming upon other limbs, check the nature of the angle formed by the direction of each discovered limb’s growth. If there appears to be more than 45 degrees between the branch and the growth (limb) that has emerged from that same branch, then take out the pruner’s trusted tool. Proceed to remove the growth that has created that wide and dangerous angle.
Tips for pruning the topmost section
The pruner should limit the extent to which the upper branches extend skyward. Usually, someone that owns a fruit tree does not want the energy from the nutrients to support any addition that is growing skyward.
Instead, that energy is supposed to aid creation of hanging fruits. Pruners work to aid the proper utilization of such energy, and they do that by cutting off about 20-35% of what nature has added over the course of one year to each tree’s topmost section.
At the same time, pruners are supposed to trim off any limbs that do not appear well established.
Final steps
Dispose of the cuttings, especially any of those that have come from a diseased tree. Do not allow the disease-causing contagion or insect to invade any of the healthy trees.
Treat each of the pruning tools in a solution of isopropyl alcohol, in order to kill any germs. Do that before using the same tools on another fruit-bearing plant. Any germ that could be on a just-used tool would be moist, and able to thrive on any plant that it might touch.
After completing all those tasks, watch for the formation of blossoms, and then fruits. Pluck off the ripe fruits and eat them. Each could serve as a reward for someone that has been willing to perform an essential function of tree care.