It's time to prune your apple trees in Alaska!
In this video, Gene shows a quick snippet of his basic pruning techniques for our apple trees.
The first step is removing the spurs that are going to be shaded from the sun or that are crowding the tree.
Next, he removes any low-lying limbs that will be in his way when he mows.
Then he looks for limbs that aren't shaped properly or that are misfits on the tree.
Finally, he looks it over and checks for anything else that appears out of place.
In this video, he removes so many spurs which can seem a bit scary if you're new to this because spurs are where the apple production happens. If everything is left to grow and bloom, it would overload the tree with apples, and the tree would not be able to support them all.
Furthermore, each spur hosts several blooms which could be several apples that we will thin after pollination. We thin about 70% of the pollinated apples and this tree still produces over 40# of apples for us every year.
If you'd like to know more about planting, managing, and caring for your orchard, we'd love to have you join us in our orchard class here on the farm in early June.
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