Fruit Tree Pruning

The weekend was beautiful with temps reaching the low 50s. Seemed like as good a time as any to prune our fruit trees. A couple years ago we planted 2 plums, 1 peach and 1 cherry tree. None had really been pruned since planting since we wanted the root stock to get established. The peach tree has been through the wringer. After first being planted it got run over by the trailer, snapped near the base and managed to miraculously bounce back and even produce some amazing fruit last year! Given it’s rough life so far, it has grown lopsided and was in need of a trim. Our farm mentor explained that we should prune it to look like a vase and remove any branches that are overlapping where they might shade out each other. We did our best and I think the results look pretty darn good! We’ll have to wait til summer to see how they fill out and if they bear any fruit, but I’m super excited to see how things turn out. And, since we don’t want to waste anything on the homestead, we cut up all the pruned branches and placed them in a growing hugelkultur bed.