February Pruning – Fruit Trees and Blueberries

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February is the month to prune most of your fruit trees and some ornamental shrubs. Pruning is necessary to fruit production as it stimulates the necessary plant hormones and improves structure for healthy flavorful fruits.

Apples need to be trained into the central leader formation. Roughly 25 to 36 inches from the soil surface should be open for movement around the tree. Remove any small woody stems that are covering or crossing between major branches. Apples require manual pruning in order to produce bigger and more flavorful fruit. Now is a good time to shorten your branches to prevent limb breakage and improve structure. Come March we should see some apple blossoms and you will want to thin these as well to prevent overproduction of apples. Apple trees only need 20% of their blossoms to have full fruit production.The key with fruit production is finding the balance between maximizing fruit quality and overall amount of fruit.

Peaches need an open center/vase training meaning that at the time of planting, the central leader was removed and the four main scaffold branches were left to grow to full height. This kind of growth pattern is used to allow for sunlight and airflow to move through the tree to allow for the fruits to remain dry and for photosynthesis to occur. Peaches are considered a high vigor tree, meaning they require a lot more sunlight than some other fruit trees. If they are shaded, then growers run into increased chances of fungi or other diseases/disorders and decreased fruit production. Removing branches allow for the tree to produce higher quality fruits. Peaches only need about 12% to 15% of their blossoms for fruit production.

It’s important to know that the fruit discussed above require scheduled pesticide use in order to have that pristine grocery store quality that many covet. That being said apple eaters can eat around apple scab and still enjoy a quality fruit. If you are looking for a fruit that is easier to grow organically in our area, start with Figs.

Blueberries

You are going to start by looking at your plant from a birds eye view. Imagine a circle around the main part of your plant. That circle is how big you’re going to allow that plant to get. Blueberries naturally want to mound and form a sort of hedge. If you have ever seen blueberries in the wild they can form dense shrubs naturally. Once you have determined your limiting area, prune everything outside of that space. The goal is to have a multi-stemmed plant with varying ages of stems/canes. This time of the year, your new canes are going to be red and older ones are grayish-brown. It’s important to have new ones ready to replace old ones as they die back. The other key thing to prune is anything that crosses over. Just like with peaches and apples, you want good airflow. Blueberries are susceptible to fungi and diseases just like any other plant. If you have matchstick-like stems with very few flower buds on the end of your canes; that is what you are looking to prune off.

If you have any questions about fruit production and care, please reach out to us!