Raintree Fruit Growing Blog

Structural pruning refers to a pruning approach that involves cutting back competing lateral branches to favor a strong leader. In this approach, a tree will have a strong leader and competing side (lateral) branches are kept narrower than half the diameter of the trunk. Co-dominant branches are not allowed to grow. This approach can be practiced on trees of all ages, but in this case one cut was made to improve the structure of an unpruned ,mature walnut tree.

Intensive training and pruning strategies can produces trees that grow smaller and more densely, resulting in more fruit on a per area basis. For the backyard (or front or side yard) urban orchardist espalier can be a great fit. Commercially, fruit trees are increasingly grown in an intensive, high-density fashion. More inputs and maintenance are required to grow trees this densely, but the reward can be an artful fruiting sculpture!

Raintree sells some great fruiting vines. While working here I have learned some about pruning and training the grapes and kiwis we grow in our orchards. In this blogpost, I introduce how to prune and train grapes and kiwis.

Fruit trees on dwarfing or semi-dwarfing can be easily pruned into productive open center (also known as open vase) or central leader forms. Learning these two pruning strategies will help the home orchardist establish healthy and fruitful trees. I discuss how open center versus central leader pruning styles differ and which fruit tree species are suited to them.