351 Honey, I Shrunk the Fruit Trees!

Show Transcript

351 Fruit Trees TRANSCRIPT

Farmer Fred  0:00  

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Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

If you have fruit trees, you just might be doing some harvesting of some delicious, tasty peaches, plums, nectarines, pluots right now with a lot more in the coming months. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to be standing on a shaky ladder trying to reach those last perfect pieces of fruit? Today, University of California Cooperative Extension Communications Specialist and Certified Consulting arborist, Kevin Marini, says get back on the ground! We’ve got tips to get a tree full of fruit all within easy reach without risking life and limb. Marini calls it, “Honey, I shrunk the fruit trees!” He’ll show us how.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots, Dave Wilson Nursery, and Heirloom Roses. Let’s go!

HONEY I SHRUNK THE FRUIT TREES Pt. 1

Farmer Fred

Even though it was a nice cool morning, and I wanted to do a bike ride, every time I walked in the backyard lately, I was looking at my Fuyu persimmon tree. And it finally came time. I must thin out the fruit. it is one of the hardest jobs for any gardener who's growing fruit trees to thin the fruit, to remove crowded fruit, to allow the tree to breathe, to keep branches from breaking. Well, the Fuyu persimmons had finally gotten to a size where they were almost touching each other. So I knew that it was time to get out there and maybe prune them out to the point where there was about six inches between each piece of fruit or so. I know that's a very hard thing to do. But it's a very necessary thing to do if you want big pieces of juicy fruit at the end of the harvest season. 

And you don't want any broken branches. And we've all learned that the hard way. 

So I spent my morning thinning out the fruit on my Fuyu persimmon tree. And for the first time in many, many years that I've been growing persimmon trees, I did it all from the ground. I did not have to stand on a step stool, I did not have to stand on a ladder. 

Because last year I finally got it through my thick skull. Maybe we had to bring the height of this Fuyu persimmon down to the point where all the fruit would be within easy reach. And sure enough, it was this year. 

Now maybe I didn't get as much this year as I did last year, but I've got plenty. I bet there's at least 100-150 pieces of Fuyu persimmon fruit still on that tree. So I'm a happy camper. I'm glad I did that. I'm glad I pruned that fruit tree down to where I can stand on the ground and not risk life and limb on a step stool or on a ladder, especially on mulch. 

Another guy I know who knows the importance of thinning fruit and maintaining fruit tree height is Kevin Marini. He is a Community Education Specialist with UC Cooperative Extension. He is a certified arborist. And for about 20 years, he headed up the Master Gardener programs in two counties here in California, Placer and Nevada counties. Folks, those are some weird-shaped counties, especially Placer County. Because in Placer County, where it starts in the West, you're going from former rice fields near sea level all the way up to Lake Tahoe at 5000-6000 feet. So there's a lot of different gardening going on. 

And Kevin trained master gardeners to be able to offer gardening advice at near sea level all the way up to the thin air country. Now as a certified arborist, he's working with a lot of people on controlling the height of their fruit trees. He likes to call his presentation to garden groups, “Honey, I Shrunk the fruit trees”. And I think that's just great. 

And finally, Kevin, finally, it's catching on, this whole idea of backyard orchard culture, keeping the height of fruit trees at a manageable height, perhaps six or seven feet tall. And the beauty of that is if you keep them at that height, you can have a lot more fruit trees in your backyard. 

Kevin Marini  4:24  

Absolutely. Hey, let me tell you the one thing that I have experienced since I've been working with homeowners in their fruit trees. It is that they rarely get fruit. They want fruit. And where is the fruit? It's at the very top of the canopy of these 25 to 30 foot tall fruit trees. So when I hear that you have gone out there and not only thinned your fruit which is very hard to do, but also over time have brought that fruit tree down so you can just stand on the ground and do everything you need to do, that warms my heart. 

Farmer Fred  4:57  

It makes me feel better too. But doing that, though, as we've been taught for years and years, is this whole idea of backyard orchard culture, and having manageable trees, I think got its start, its impetus, back in the 1990s, from Dave Wilson Nursery and people like Ed Laivo and Tom Spellman, and it's taking hold. But the question always still appears, “I have a 15 or a 20 foot tall tree, how do I take it down to six or seven feet tall?” And what we've been telling people over the years is, well, it's a slow process. 

Kevin Marini  5:33  

It is a slow process. And I have a great story to relate on this. So a lot of the Master Gardener programs have demonstration gardens, where they do workshops, and things like that, and demonstrate all these best practices they teach about. And so up here in Grass Valley in Nevada County, as part of the Nevada County Master Gardener program, there  is a big demo garden, and they have a beautiful orchard, that orchard was planted 35 years ago, potentially even longer than that. And it was planted with standard fruit trees. And so of course, when you have standard fruit trees, you have gigantic trees. And these trees grew fast and big and quickly got out of hand for these master gardeners to tend to, to manage. 

And so they kind of hit a point where they said, “We're either going to take out all these trees and replant them, or we're going to get some help to bring them down to size”. And so we asked for some help. And that help was in the form of a Sacramento farm advisor who has since passed, named Chuck Ingels. I know who you know who Chuck is. And so Chuck was very gracious and came out to our demo garden, and kind of put together a three to five year plan. It is a slow process. But basically, we did it over three to five years and  by year five, the trees were significantly lower to where we did not even have to get ladders out. If you think of five years being fast or slow, and that's a little subjective, but it's faster than you may think. 

And the key, of course, that Chuck elucidated at that time, was not stressing the tree out by doing an enormous amount of removal of limbs and stuff all at once. But to do it staggered over time. Big cuts on trees are not good things, right. They're large wounds that take a long time to heal. And so you want to minimize those large pruning cuts as much as possible. So by staggering it over a number of years, you don't do it all at once and risk complete death of the tree. And so I encourage anyone, if they're in Nevada County and Grass Valley, to check out our orchard at the demonstration garden and see the enormous trunks on these trees. But yet the trees are almost completely flat on top and not higher than 12 to 14 feet. 

Farmer Fred  7:57  

One thing I would like to point out for people who do have regular sized fruit trees that might be 15 or 20 feet tall: Don't use your household stepladder, invest in an orchard ladder. 

Kevin Marini  8:09  

I absolutely cannot emphasize that enough. From experience. To be honest, I feel a little embarrassed even saying it but I definitely have tried to use a frame ladder. And I live in the foothills on a slope on rocky gopher infested land, mounds everywhere. And so yeah, definitely go with the orchard ladder. And it's unbelievable how easy it is to navigate. A lot of people think, “oh, gosh, what's up with that  one little arm that swings out, it doesn't seem safe”. It's actually incredibly stable.

Farmer Fred  8:43  

Yeah, it's like a tripod with that one long metal arm and then two regular feet. And yet it's incredibly stable.

Kevin Marini  8:50  

Yeah, it's works. It works great. And even in like what you were talking about in mulched areas, that's really where you got to be careful about using ladders and where we put a bunch of mulch down. It's so prone to just kind of sinking in. Orchard ladders really perform good in those circumstances. 

Farmer Fred  9:09  

Well, by the time you get your tree down to six or seven feet, you can sell that orchard ladder for a great profit. So think about that, as you're only maybe taking off perhaps 1/3 of the total length of a branch in any one season.

Kevin Marini  9:22  

Yeah, Ideally, one thing that I have absolutely come around to is that there's really two times to prune for all fruit trees. And maybe not citrus, that's a little bit of a different animal. But when we're talking about most stone and pome fruit trees that people have in their backyards, it really needs to be a combination of dormant pruning and Summer pruning. And I can't emphasize that enough. And it’s not “or both” It’s both. What I have learned over all these 25 years teaching about fruit trees and tending to fruit trees is that both dormant and Summer pruning pruning are necessary  to keep the trees at the height you want. It's really difficult to do just one or the other and have those trees remain small and not have so much growth to deal with. That  takes so much time to deal with. So I'm all about both dormant and Summer pruning in conjunction to keep trees small. 

Farmer Fred  10:20  

And Summer pruning is usually best accomplished right after harvest. And dormant pruning is after the last leaf has fallen, so you can get a good idea of the structure. And you can spot those rubbing branches, crossing branches, or branches that are headed to the interior and blocking ventilation. And cutting those out can help your tree avoid a lot of diseases, as well. 

Kevin Marini  10:42  

Oh, yeah, one thing that's nice about fruit tree pruning is there's a real kind of prescription. Step one, step two, step three, step four. And if you follow that, and even if you don't know a lot about pruning, if you just, like you mentioned, take out the branches that are obviously going towards the center of the tree or that have broken or that are dead, dying, or diseased. There's a few first steps that anyone can go out there and do. And so that is really empowering for a lot of folks that, hey, I know that I can at least keep my tree looking decent by doing the steps. 

Of course, then you get into more of the art side of fruit tree pruning, where you're shaping and you're making some decisions about what type of cuts to make and things like that. It can be more complex. It is more complex. But like you say, there's some basics that everyone can get out there and do.

Farmer Fred  11:34  

When it comes to thinning cuts or heading cuts: What is the primary cut you like to do when bringing a tree down in size?

Kevin Marini  11:44  

So this is a real interesting thing to talk about. Because I always use the language in the arborist world to explain pruning cuts. There is different language in the fruit tree world. So in the fruit tree world, a heading cut is used to describe reducing a branch, usually a one year old branch or older, and cutting it down to a bud or a branch. Okay, in the arborist world, a heading cut is kind of a hacking cut, it's just made anywhere. And a good example of that would be say shearing or hedging, where you're just making a bunch of heading cuts and they usually fall not necessarily to a bud or a branch. But they could even occur between a node. And the response growth from a heading cut is usually a whorl of growth. So when you make a heading cut, and again, I'm referring to more of the heading cut defined in the arborist world. It's not necessarily intentional to where you're making that cut. So it creates this world of growth that becomes a problem for trees. You will have to go back and fix all that regrowth. The cut that's used a lot for fruit trees, using the arborist language, is a reduction cut. And the reduction cut is what it sounds like. It's reducing the length of a branch, that should always go back to a bud or back to a branch. so that the energy goes into that bud, goes into the branch, and does not result in the trees respond being a whorl of growth. Does that make sense?

Farmer Fred  13:28  

It makes perfect sense. People may get very confused if they're traveling in their car in the countryside. And maybe they're going by a cherry orchard. And all of a sudden, they're passing workers and the workers have this big, huge machine that's going along the top of the cherry trees that are basically horizontal saws, just shearing off the tops of the cherry trees. And they say that they can't possibly be doing a cut at a branch junction or at a bud. They're just doing it willy nilly.

Kevin Marini  13:56  

Exactly. Yeah,  and that is pretty amazing to watch, isn't it? And so in that case, you know, they're doing it at a time of year where it's unlikely to initiate a bunch of regrowth. So timing is important. But at the same time, you're absolutely right. There's no intention of where each branch is getting cut. It's just along the top. Now, can homeowners do that? Well, sure. But it may result in some regrowth that you don't want. So I always talk to homeowners about always pruning back to a bud or a branch just as a good practice, like a best practice to always have. That way you avoid the potential problems of a heading cut and that all that regrowth. 

Farmer Fred  14:45  

Yeah, unfortunately for homeowners, cutting back on a tree, it's usually based on how far can the saw reach. And that's where they make the cut. When in reality, if they just maybe don't stretch as far and come back down to a crossing branch or  a bud and make the cut there, they'd have a lot fewer problems in future years. 

We see that a lot in ornamental trees in the front yards of people who have hacked back at  ornamental trees, especially fruitless mulberry trees. Where  they've hacked back at one branch, two new branches eventually come out. They hack back at those two branches, four branches come out.

Kevin Marini  15:19  

Isn't that the truth. And this happens with not just fruit trees, but it happens with young ornamental trees that people plant and a branch will end up growing over their driveway a little bit, and they'll just go, “oh, I don't want that there.” And they will just cut it wherever, just so it's not going over the driveway. So you're right. It happens with all trees. And it's one of the things that, gosh, it's so super important not to do that, because you can really create some bad structure, some bad branch attachments, by going that route. 

Farmer Fred  15:51  

And by bad, I think you mean being weakly attached, because those branches could grow out. And if you see some of these very tight crotches that they form,  they're then more susceptible to breaking. And it could be you or your car, that's becomes a victim. 

Kevin Marini  16:07  

Absolutely. And with fruit trees, of course, you have ideally, all of that fruit on the branch that's creating a load, creating weight. And, man, when you have those narrow crotch angles - I love the language we're using - those narrow crotch angles in the trees, they can just rip out very, very easily. A lot of the people that I work with in their backyard orchards are really surprised that the higher the angle,  approaching 90 degrees, the stronger that attachment is. They tend to think that those 45 degree angles are very strong, because when they're young, there's no obvious reason why they're not. But as they get older, it becomes very obvious, especially for an arborist because you see what's called occluded bark. That’s the fact that there's not really much wood there in between the crotch there. That's one thing that's really important. You don't want narrow angles between your branches. You want them approaching 90 degrees.

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HONEY, I SHRUNK THE FRUIT TREES, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation with Kevin Marini of the University of California Cooperative Extension. He's a communications specialist, and he's a certified and consulting arborist and we're talking fruit trees, including what you need to do when you plant a fruit tree. Even if you don't want to do it, you really need to do this:

Farmer Fred

You know, there's always exceptions to rules. And then one of those exceptions is another one that can draw gasps of horror from a crowd gathered to see a new fruit tree being planted. And that's when the demonstrator basically takes that stick and cuts it in half. Yeah, and they don't realize the benefits of cutting a newly planted fruit tree, cutting it really off at the knees because you're gonna form branches that are lower to the ground and have fruit that is witheasy reach. 

Kevin Marini  20:03  

Yeah, and I have to admit that I'm one of those people that does that at my workshops. It does, it kind of always elicit a big gasp like you just did that right? And you said the right term. So  that's heading back, right. And so in that case, you're not heading back, you're not pruning down that stick to a branch or button necessarily, you're just cutting it off at the knees. And what that does is it spurs a bunch of buds to pop and grow, which gives you all these great options for new scaffold branches, your main branches, that are coming off the stem. It is the number one strategy for keeping the new tree small. It is cutting it at the knees at planting. So many folks want the biggest bare root fruit tree they can find. And they would never consider cutting that down at the knees after finding the biggest one, at let’s say a seven foot tall apple: “oh, gosh, we want that one!” Well, here I come along and say, cut it all the way down here. 

But that is the number one strategy besides root stock selection. So most fruit trees are grafted, and they're grafted on these root stocks that can help control height and spread. And so there are genetic dwarf rootstocks. And there are semi dwarf root stocks that help control height. So I guess you could make the argument that that's the first step is making sure you're getting one of those dwarf fruit stocks to keep the tree small. But the next step would be cutting it at the knees. I'm with you on that. 

Farmer Fred  21:43  

If you are in the market for new bare root fruit trees come winter, if you deal with a reputable local nursery, they're going to be choosing the fruit trees with the rootstocks that's probably better for your area. Because it may be more likely to succeed in wet soils or clay soils or sandy soils, whatever the case may be. Let them make that choice for you. Because root stock labels can be very confusing. 

Kevin Marini  22:11  

Oh, yeah. And so you know, there are there are a number of local nurseries that sell local fruit trees. So there's one in Placer County, for example, they grow them there. They harvest and they graft them, they sell them, like you say, with a match that's good for the area. And then there's nurseries that are purchasing from large producers. So everyone knows Dave Wilson fruit trees are great fruit trees, but  these local nurseries will select their stock of  Dave Wilson fruit trees from the perspective of what works best for this area, as far as root stock. So, yeah, absolutely. And I'm amazed how many people that you know are really kind of obsessed with fruit trees, they they're all  getting into grafting on their own. Grafting now has become pretty popular, at least in the fruit tree world. So people now, I'm not surprised to hear, when someone says, “oh, I picked out this root stock and I grafted my own scions to it”. You know, that's not so rare to hear anymore.

Farmer Fred  23:15  

That's right. And soon they learn the definition of the word precociousness. Where one variety out of four on a tree tries to take over!

Kevin Marini  23:25  

Yeah, the multigraft trees are not fun to prune, that's for sure. You have to, at a client's house, it's like you have to explain why you're hammering this one variety, while leaving the other ones pretty much as is, right? It’s really, really difficult in those multi-varietal trees, and just within one type, but having multiple varieties. Either way, it's tough. It's tough to manage those trees appropriately for a really solid production from all of the grafts.

Farmer Fred  23:57  

And that is something to consider if you do have a multi budded fruit tree in your yard that has gotten out of control and you want to bring it back down to size, you better mark the branches of each variety so you don't accidentally cut one completely off.

Kevin Marini  24:11  

So really, I know that happens because I've seen it. I've gone out to places where the tags are still there, but are just hanging on barely enough.

Farmer Fred  24:21  

Well, that's why I've always been a big proponent of not only having that tag out at the tree, but also write it down inside. Keep a garden journal and write down what you planted, when you planted, where you planted. So when the raccoons come along, and besides taking your fruit, they take the plastic sign away, you know exactly what tree it is.

Kevin Marini  24:43  

And those things, they degrade over time too. I've had a few of those tags fall off and without recording it in a journal like you're talking about. Yeah,  I run in and make a note  to remember it. Absolutely, they don't last forever.

Farmer Fred  24:58  

Well that was a nice scenic bypass!

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HONEY, I SHRUNK THE FRUIT TREES! Pt. 3

Farmer Fred

We're reducing the size of your fruit trees. We are chatting with Kevin Marini of the University of California Cooperative Extension. He's a communication specialist. He's also a consulting and certified arborist. And we're talking about the specific cuts that you should be making on your fruit trees. 

Farmer Fred

Getting back to reduction of fruit trees, let's talk about the one type of cut we didn't talk about. And that's a thinning cut. And I think that would be most valuable when you're trying to clear out the interior of a tree to improve air circulation.

Kevin Marini  27:21  

Yes, yes. So thinning cuts refer to cuts that remove a branch at its origin. And so what we've talked about so far are heading cuts or reduction cuts, they are bringing the length of a branch back to somewhere else  on that branch where new growth is going to occur. Thinning cuts remove the branch all the way at its origin. So you're right, all those branches that are growing towards the center are generally going to be thinning cuts that are used. You're gonna use thinning cuts to remove them completely, you may get some regrowth in there from doing a bunch of thinning cuts. But that's just because you just exposed new buds to new light. That's the other important thing about those thinning cuts. They not only help maintain the structure of the fruit tree. But it also allows light to penetrate that fruit tree so that you keep getting fruit production within the tree on lower areas of the branches. A lot of times it gets so thick in the middle of those fruit trees that the only fruit that ever gets formed is on the outside. And Fred, I'm sure you know, when you have fruit on the outside of the canopy, you're lucky if you're going to get it first. Birds and others, there's lots of lots of competition for that fruit on the outside of the canopy.

Farmer Fred  28:39  

That was one of my decisions in thinning out the fruit on the Fuyu persimmon tree today. Okay, you got two pieces of fruit growing next to each other, which one gets removed? Well, obviously, the smaller one would would lose, and I'd keep the bigger one unless the bigger one was sunburned. And then I would remove that one. 

Kevin Marini  29:01  

Yeah, with this heat. There's a lot of sunburn on fruit and on bark as well. So you know when I go out and do Summer pruning, where I'm removing a lot of canopy and a lot of that shade all the sudden, not only is the fruit that can be exposed if there's still fruit on the tree, but the bark suddenly gets exposed to intense sunlight which can cause sunburn, which oh my gosh, that leads to so much disease as well as bacterial cankers and all these things that really can be a death knell for these trees.

Farmer Fred  29:35  

Yeah, that brings up a very good point too, ab