If you draw a mental picture of the natural form of a tree and make every effort
to protect the tree from the local environment, then it will thrive, putting out good fruit
year after year. Pruning only creates a need for more pruning, but if the grower
realizes that trees not in need of pruning also exist in this world and is determined to
grow such trees, they will bear fruit without pruning. How much wiser and easier it
is to limit oneself to minimal corrective pruning aimed only at bringing the tree
closer to its natural form rather than practicing a method of fruit growing that
requires extensive pruning each and every year....
...5. The pruning techniques used in fruit growing tend to change with the
times, but the natural form of a tree remains always the same. Use of the
natural form is the best approach possible for stable, labor-saving, high-
yield fruit cultivation. Success is especially easy with trees such as the
persimmon, chestnut, apple, pear, and loquat, which can readily be trained
to a natural form. Considerable success can also be had with vines such as
the Chinese gooseberry and grape.
- FUKUOKA Natural way of farming Chapter 4 (the practice of natural farming) Section 3 (fruit trees)
Georgina Nelson Thomas wrote:The no-prune approach doesn't work for trees like peaches, that only fruit on one-year wood. You *do* need to prune, because if you don't, the branches get longer and longer, with all the fruit at the tips (instead of further in towards the trunk). I don't know if the same is true for apricots, because altho I have 3 apricots, I only see blooms in the spring -- but no fruit yet (trees are 3 or 4 years old). I've had zero success, but I keep trying (and hoping for a very early summer because the trees bloom so early!).
Masanobu Fukuoka wrote:(one of the disadvantages of naturally formed trees is that..) the natural forms of young grapevines and persimmon, pear and apple trees have low branch, leaf, and fruit densities, and thus produce small yields. This can be resolved by discreet pruning to increase the density of fruit and branch formation.
Masanobu Fukuoka wrote:The natural form consists of an erect central trunk, causing little entanglement with neighboring trees or crowding of branches and foliage. The amount of pruning required gradually decreases and little disease or pest damage arises, necessitating only a minimum of care. However, in open-center systems formed by thinning the scaffold branches growing at the center of the tree, the remaining scaffold branches open up at the top of the tree and soon entangle with adjacent trees. In addition, secondary scaffold branches and laterals growing from several primary scaffold branches oriented in unnatural angles (such as in three-stem systems) also crisscross and entangle.
Alder Burns wrote:I've gone back and forth on this issue my whole life, and the only principle I can bring to bear is "it depends".
#1: volunteer of unknown type. Has a very old dead trunk (15" thick and perfectly straight) that's all that remains of the original tree, and some sucker growth that's been there long enough to become new trunks, tho they mostly grew sideways. Was completely choked by vines and appeared more dead than not. I cleaned off the vines and the tree responded by making enough leaves to look halfway healthy, but did not bloom.
#2: volunteer crab (small sweet fruits that are bright red inside and out, with small seeds like rose pips): Top is dead down to about 10 feet off the ground; below that it's all weeping whiplike branches up to 15 feet long (the older ones are fairly thick but retain the weeping habit). On my side of the fence it's done whatever it liked and was LOADED with fruit (it bloomed for about six weeks and the fruit has continued to mature for over a month now); on the other side the horses prune it and it didn't produce much. Since when are there weeping apples?? cuz that appears to be its natural habit. It is not a "beer apple".
[#3, 4, and 5: planted in a close row, have been pruned and broken by bears and horses in the past but not recently (no evidence of deliberate pruning other than some deadwood being cut off), unknown type. #3 appeared completely dead, but in late July it suddenly put out a bunch of leaves from bark buds and started to look halfway salvageable. No bloom, tho. Well, at least now I can see what parts are dead for real. #4 looks healthy and produced hundreds of apples (every clump of leaves has multiple clumps of apples), albeit none over 2.5" diameter. #5 has distinct patches of a) small fruit similar to #4, b) puny single fruits that didn't mature well, and c) no fruit. #5 looked the healthiest before they fruited and now looks like death warmed over, but it probably doesn't get as much water (furthest from the irrigation ditch, and they didn't get any water beyond what seeps naturally).
#6 over across the RR tracks where the original homestead used to be, appears to be a volunteer hybrid of the red crab #2 and something like #4 (bigger fruit, pink inside, not as sweet as the crabs). Growing at the edge of a tangle of completely neglected trees of every sort, gets lots of water but hardly any sun, bloomed like mad and is almost as loaded with fruit as the crab.
There are also a lot of wild plums here, scruffy little things like overgrown thornbushes, but have bucketloads of fruit (and it's so sweet it's gaggy, what on earth do you do with that??)
Bryant RedHawk wrote:This tree, while it could be salvaged, sounds like a good candidate for removal. the old dead trunk would need to be removed and the suckers would need to be gently straightened up by training. Most likely any real effort would not be rewarded in the near future.
Bryant RedHawk wrote:This tree needs some serious help, it sounds like it is worth the effort to save. Prune out all the dead wood (dead wood sucks life out of the living parts of a tree) then remove any crossing limbs. The weeping habit comes from the branches growing below the dead trunk but there are weeping crab apple trees.
Bryant RedHawk wrote:#5 Water is a huge requirement for fruit trees. We give our trees water once a week for three to four hours at 1 gallon per 20 minutes flow rate, when in fruit a tree will need to have enough water available to support the tree and the fruit growth, if it doesn't it will drop the fruit or the tree will begin to die.
Bryant RedHawk wrote:Those sound like native plums, they make wonderful wine and jelly.