Rejuvanating Old Pear & Apple trees

[bernie5711]

 

[bernie5711]

 

[bernie5711]

 

[bernie5711]

Sorry about all the duplicate postings of pictures. This mess is giving me fits!!!!

 

[secuono]

Yea..wow...2 pages full. Hah, nice!

I like the trees like that...guess it's just me?
They do make extending 10ft apple picker poles...
Idk, kind of looks like the trees were nice, then someone left them, another person came by and cut off bottom branches to walk under...
Or bottom ones were cut off because of disease, but I would assume someone cutting them for mowing/walking access instead...


My soon-to-be mother-in-law has massive apple trees, love them! They are older and much thicker than yours are. Strong branches and you could easily climb up them to almost any point, very cool!

 

[secuono]

MODS, any chance you guys can delete the duplicate posts for bernie5711?

 

[bernie5711]

sORRY ABOUT THE TOTAL MESS OF THE PICTURES. I had 3, with 2 showing how tall and bulky about half of them were, way in the back, but every time I posted I'd get multiple posts and then when I posted another one, the others would disappear. Anyway.....The ones you see were at the front and was so covered they couldn't get any sun at all so didn't grow as large as the ones you can't see. The ones you can see look thinner because of all the dead stuff i took out, especially around the bottom. I read you can remove dead stuff any time of the year. There was an incrediable amount of dead stuff from top to bottom and in some cases more dead branches than live. It's been a chore to say the least. On the smaller stuff, I mainly took off the dead stuff from about 10 feet and down. On the really big ones, there is dead stuff way into the top and I'm going to wait until I do the main pruning in March to take it out. I figured I'd risk my life just the once rather than this summer and again come winter. .

I actually did consider cutting them to the main trunk and try my hand at grafting but a guy at McAdams nursery, here in PA, said it wouldn't work on old trees like this. He said if they were older than 4 or 5 years, I was setting myself up to fail? That's not what i heard and read but he has been operating a huge apple operation for years so i guess i have to bow to the experts.

Also someone said in an earlier post not to reduce the height of the Pear trees, as growing up was a natural state for them, but if I don't control the height, are they going to produce flowering branches lower? Right now there's nothing you can really reach without a ladder and some of the fruit would be so high you would need a lift truck to get them

 

[catjac1975]

The trees do not appear to me to be as old as you think, unless the photo is from quite a distance. The rule to pruning is you can cut suckers at any time of the year along with broken, damages branches. You want to prune out the middle to create good air flow. You prune 1/3 of the growth at a time so as to not stress the trees too much. Winter is the best time when the trees are dormant. Make sure you are not doing all of this work for crab apple trees. If you have access to manure start loading it beneath the trees. We need lime here so it is good to do a soil test. They should be fertilized out to the drip line. Do not leave mulch or manure too near the tree or mice will eat the bark and girdle it through the winter. Here is a photo of some well pruned trees.

 

[catjac1975]

Posting pictures can be done from this site-no need for facebook or anything else, Go to the search for easy instructions.

My "orchard" is one baby pear tree.

You just upload pictures to facebook or an image hosting site, like Photobucket.
Then you right click on the image and copy the image url.
In your reply in the forum thread, click the Img button above the smiley icons. Paste the url you copied between ][
URL

 

[secuono]

If the trees had dead branches, is it possible that is from Fire Blight? If so, I hope it didn't reach the root by the time you cut them off.


catjac1975, I upload to my own places, never to a forum. It's too much work to keep up with several picture hosts. Just how I do it.