Fruit Pruning
This guide will demonstrate how to properly prune several groups of fruit trees, brambles and bushes. The most important question you need to consider when starting to prune a crop not covered is this: What year wood doest it fruit on? Once this is established the techniques taught in this guide can be applied to other unique specialty crops not covered.
General Pruing goals pertaining to all fruit crops are simply to manage these criteria:
* Manage the tree or plant to keep it under control
* Allow sufficient air flow through the canapy to minimize disease and other biological vectors
* Allow sufficient light to penetrate the canapy to produce fruiting buds the following season
* To encourage even growth and production
Explanation of fruiting wood?
* Apples fruit on second year old wood
* Peaches fruit on First year wood
* Raspberries can fruit on first year or second
* Blueberries fruit on 2-6 year wood
Once determining what year wood the plant fruits on you will need to get in the mindset to produce this wood and dont let yourself cut it off this year. It can be easy on apple to cut every branch back, which is often the problem when used in landscapes and pruned by a landscaper. They tend to shape a tree to look good. For fruit prodution we are not as concerned with it looking like a perfect sphere. So you have to let some branches grow and some branched get cut out completely.
Visit the specific crop page to learn specifically how to prune.