Summer Pruning in the Apple Orchard here on the Farm.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Repose Ranch YouTube channel. In this video, we wanted to show you what summer pruning the apple trees looks like here in the orchard. Dad is going to talk us through what summer pruning is and how he decides what to prune and what not to prune. Definition of summer pruning is to control the growth of the tree and maximize fruit output and not waste energy in a tree that you don't need to get bigger. It's for an established tree that, you know, I would love to pick these all from the ground. I may not get on the ladder, but this is an old tree and I'm gonna have to get on the ladder up here, but I don't want to go any further. As we look to the center of the tree here, you can see you can see in one in particular branch here. Now you see why there's a need for an orchard ladle so you can get this guy in there like that. Center leader here, which I let break a couple of pruning rules last year because it's ultimately going to be my new center leader as I had to cut off the center leader. You can see all these branches, not one speck of fruit on them, not even one bud. It didn't even have one flower. So that is a lot of growth that's going into the tree that's not producing. So this year it's probably time to get one of these and choose one and keep the other and take the other one off. Probably do that in the spring. That'd be too big of a wound in the summer, but at least I can get branches that are pointed towards the center off because they're just wasting energy. Like I said, whether you're doing it in the spring or winter, summer prune or spring prune, you were going to prune that guy off anyway. He was great growing towards the center and just cluttering up the center of the tree. So why not cut it off now? Then you're going to take and whack this stuff down. You want to go to an outward facing bud and maybe you'll get a little growth even yet left this fall once this cut heals and the canopy will start coming out this way versus straight up in the middle. This one is already going to be a conflict for next year so it's gone. This one's already a conflict. Take a look at this one. We got apples right to this point because last year I pruned it off right to there. This is all the new growth for this year. So if you don't want to, if you want to utilize the new growth for apples next year but you don't want to take it completely off, go three to four buds up and trim and that'll give you a good start on another good leader. But the ones that are pointing the wrong direction, just take them completely off. Like this one right here, it's pointed right towards the center. It does nothing for you. Now does this crowd, if that branch were to fruit, does this crowd the sunlight then for the, most definitely, if it were to have fruit? Yeah, it'll cause faster ripening because the air, less bugs, less fungus and stuff that attacks fruit because you've got air movement. The old rule of thumb is if you can throw a baseball hat cleanly through an apple tree, you've pruned it enough. Oh, that's cool. That is cool. Yeah, that's, that's an old saying right there. All right. But see, this one's pointing to the center. It's going to get all tangled up with those ones right there. So I'm going to go right to where it grew out and said, hey, you didn't produce any fruit, you're out of here. Oh, I'm already seeing those apples more. That's awesome. Pretty. These older grannies are so special. You just want to make sure that you're not taking one of the fruit buds and you're taking the one-year-old wood off if you're doing a summer prune. Otherwise you're cutting away your fruit for next year. These ones just all pointing towards the center. They don't do any good. Now I'm going to come over there and try to get some up close of the one-year-old versus two-year-old. The one-year-old is this thin stuff, obviously, and it's not going to fruit even next year. All it's doing is helping with the photosynthesis of the tree, which always the tree seems to grow enough of enough of these what I'm cutting. And a lot of times it's too much and it blocks the sunlight so that the fruit doesn't ripen as easy. So is this two-year-old wood the one in the center here? Oh, that's probably three-year-old right here. Here's two-year-old cuts right here and then it grew up and it's one-year-old up here. That's why I cut it back. So if I want some of the one-year-old, I'll leave three or four buds of the one-year-old back down to the two-year-old. So here's this right here is the two-year-old cut. See it? And then it branched off this way and now I've trimmed back the one-year-old right up here with an outward facing leaf for a potential new branch coming out this way. This is only what you're going to do on a mature tree that you don't want to grow. Is she having a blast over there? Yes, she's fine. Okay, see there's the cut I did last year right there. I gave it a heading cut right here. You see that? Yep. Okay, and then this is what all grew this year. Wow, that's incredible. If you leave it on there, there's a chance to get apple buds up here, but now your tree is three feet taller and I got to get a taller ladder. So to keep your tree producing large amounts of fruit and down where you can pick them, you have to do the summer prune. That's awesome. That's a tremendous amount of growth in one year and I'm not going to get all these, save all these because some of them were pointed right towards the center of the tree which, like I said, doesn't do any good. See this? I'm just clearing this out now and then I'll get serious about which ones I want to keep and which ones I don't need. This is coming in to compete with the other one, so we're going to take that one and this one off for sure. I'm going to take advantage of the vigor in this growth here, but I don't want to get the tree that much taller, so I'm going to let it have three or four inches. Okay. I've got about everything I can get here. Now I'm going to move over and clean this up right here. All right. You can see the line of where I pruned last year essentially is right where the apples stop. Oh, I see that. I prune them back to that. Every year I won't get such a tall tree. Okay. Three legs is pretty sturdy. All right. How tall is your ladder there? It's a 12 footer. 12 footer. 10 or 12. Yeah, this one I got a willow. Nice. Okay. See this branch is growing right into that one, but it's got an apple on it down here, so I'm going to leave the fruit bud and take the branch. There's the codling moth lure right there hanging. Oh, nice. Yeah. Those have proven to be pretty effective. Yeah, they're commercial grade stuff. I'm going to do something pretty dramatic here, I think. Okay. Because this is causing too much issues up here. Oh, wow. Will you hand me that big pruner right there? Sure. It's trying to get over here and mess with this guy, so I'm going to take this guy out right here. We got the big pruner now. Oh, yeah. Normally you wouldn't quite do that on a summer prune, but that was the only way to deal with that one. I think this one, this tree is vigorous enough to make that heel happen before winter. Are you going to paint any of these cuts? No. No? Okay. Because it's dry right now. It's best, reality is, it's best not to have to paint the wounds. Right. Because the tree does a better job of healing it than protecting it. Than paint, yeah. But, yeah, let's see what I got going on here now. I don't need this many going straight up. I like to have them going that way. See, these two, now I got to decide between these two. So I'm going to take the lower one off, keep the upper one, but then cut it to an outward facing bud, like that. Take this guy completely back to the fruit bud here. That is just causing the issue there. You got one more chance to clean this stuff up in the spring before you get into the growth season again. So just getting a head start on it and trying to control growth is the point. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm sure you guys have seen where you've got apple trees that are really old and they just go straight up like wild hair. Oh, yeah. A lot of wild hair trees. It starts getting up in here where there's just a big mess. That one's got all kinds of growth on it. You just got to decide what you want to deal with and what you don't want to deal with. In this case, I want that big pruner again. Okay. Because I want to control the growth in those situations. Big pruner here coming in. I'm going to take this off even below what I pruned last year because it went wild. That one's going towards the center. Can't have that. That one's going over and messing around with that one. Can't have that one. This one's causing some trouble over here, so I can't have that one. When you got a lot to choose from, there you go. You can give it a haircut. See? Isn't that much better? Opened it right up. Much better. You just got to take it one branch at a time and decide whether you want it or not, or whether it's facing the right ... You got plenty to choose from, or whether it's just cluttering up the tree. That might someday be something. I'll give it a chance. All right. Let's look at the rest of this now. This is a nothing burger. This outward facing bud, I like the way it's pointed. This one gets taken off. This has got an apple, so I'm going to leave the fruit bud and take the rest off. No, we are adopting all the bollies for me. All the bollies is mine. Oh, she loves that. Oh, she'll eat on them and chew on them for days. Do you like it? Harp. She does love it. There's the face. Is it good? So dad kept working all afternoon pruning the apple trees. He finished this tree and some of the others, but has our most prolific Granny Smith tree left to do. He will probably finish the summer pruning this weekend or next, and we will show you how it looks when it is all done. We want to thank all of you for joining us today. If you have enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like and subscribe to our channel so you can get updated every time we upload a new video. See you next time.