It’s time to prune your fruit trees
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2018.
Maine may still be in winter, but — if you can believe it — the best time to prune apple and pear trees is now, before spring officially arrives.
“This is the time of year when the temperature starts to warm up and there is less chance of interfering with natural hardiness when you prune,” said Renae Moran, Cooperative Extension fruit tree specialist at the University of Maine and associate professor of pomology (the science of growing fruit) for the UMaine School of Food and Agriculture.
Moran works at Highmoor Farm, a UMaine fruit and vegetable research center that spans 278 acres on Route 202 in Monmouth. Home to 17 acres of orchards and five acres of vegetables and berries, the farm also includes two large barns, two laboratories, a store, 10 walk-in coolers, two hoop houses and a greenhouse.
“We start pruning our trees in January and we don’t finish it until late March or April,” Moran said of Highmoor Farm’s orchards. “It takes us all winter.”
For college classes and public workshops, Highmoor Farm has an educational orchard stocked with a wide variety of fruit trees to demonstrate how some trees are cared for differently than others.
“For apples and pears, you should be done pruning by the time the trees start to break (bud or sprout), which is late April,” Moran said, “and that’s it. is because as it gets warmer, there’s a disease that starts to build up and it’s called fire blight.
Fire blight is a contagious disease that affects apples, pears and certain other members of the Rosaceae family. Caused by bacteria, it can spread from tree to tree using pruning shears. Therefore, you want to prune your trees before the bacteria becomes active.
“Luckily, here in Maine, it’s not a big problem,” Moran said.
The opposite is the case for stone fruit trees, like peaches and cherries, Moran said. It is best to prune stone fruit trees once they have started growing. Again, the reason is illness. Stone fruit trees are susceptible to bacterial canker, a disease that tends to attack branches through pruning cuts and leaf scars. During the growing season, pruning cuts heal more quickly, meaning trees are less likely to become infected.
“These are just guidelines,” Moran emphasized. “It is always better to prune trees than not to do so. Pruning is one of the best things you can do for fruit trees.
Pruning prevents fruit trees from growing in a way that is counterproductive to fruit production. For example, fruit trees naturally grow many shoots and large branches, which shade the interior of the tree and lower branches, making fruit production low or impossible. The goal of pruning is to create an open canopy that allows light to pass through, thus promoting the production of larger fruits.
This and more are explained on the Maine Cooperative Extension website in the section “Growing Fruit Trees in Maine,” co-authored by Moran with Glen Koehler, a UMaine associate scientist specializing in IPM. pests. The website provides a wealth of information about fruit trees, from planting and early care to pollination requirements to diseases and pests that ravage fruit trees.
Additionally, a number of fruit tree pruning workshops are held throughout the state by the University of Maine and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
A MOFGA workshop on renovating old apple trees is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 17 at four locations: Morning Glory Farm in Bethel, 444 Basin Point Road in Harpswell, Beach Hill Farm in Mount Desert and Kermit S. Nickerson. School in Swanville. Fees are $35 for MOFGA members and $50 for non-members, and participants are asked to bring a bagged lunch. For more information, visit mofga.org.
Another MOFGA event focused on fruit tree grafting is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 7 at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center in Unity, and again from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 28 at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. . The fee for this program is $40 for MOFGA members and $50 for non-members, and again, participants are asked to bring a bagged lunch. Additionally, you will need to purchase a program-specific grafting knife, details of which can be found on the MOFGA website.
Additionally, the UMaine Cooperative Extension Volunteer Master Gardener program includes plenty of information and hands-on practice on pruning fruit trees, but that’s only a fraction of what is taught during the 40-year course. hours in the art and science of horticulture, which costs $250 and is followed by an additional 40 hours of volunteer work on community gardening programs and activities. For more information, visit extension.umaine.edu/gardening/master-gardeners.
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