We have about twenty-thirty old Great Farm apples to get back into production, all different types, some of unknown variety, possibly never to be identified. This is a little early in the year for pruning, but as there are so many, I thought I'd get started. My neighbor Hamilton gave me the idea because he was cutting back trees to allow cars to pass on his driveway.
This is my first try. The various guidebooks and bulletins I read said you could prune an overgrown apple two ways, a stiff pruning every year for a few years, ending in what would still be quite a tall tree, inconveniently so, or by "dehorning," pruning back the main scaffold branches to essentially start over from a much lower pollard.
I meant to try the former, but the lack of an apple ladder that could help me reach the high branches meant I cut lower down than intended, and I just kept going with that. We'll do a couple trees a year, and see what the results are. Possibly we'll have to get that apple ladder. A craftsman in Brooks, our friend Peter Baldwin, makes very good ones.
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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.
The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.
After getting tired of spam comments (up to a dozen or more per day), I required commentators to be Google "registered users". You can write me at mwomersley@unity.edu if you have a serious comment or question and are not a registered user.
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