apples grow on old wood stock, not new. very early spring pruning stimulates new
growth while summer pruning is to control size. new wood has to age before spurs
form. those many little small branches are where the apples form. other than
clearing out dead wood and opening up the center, my mother never pruned our large
apple trees. and apples require a spray schedule starting with dormant oil in winter
and every 7-10 days after blossom drop (which is the most important spray) to produce
nice looking unwormy apples.
vertical growing branches suggest pruning has already stimulated water sprouts.
these are removed in mid to late July, not in spring.
if this was a cold wet spring that could be the reason for the lack of apples. other
cultural conditions could contribute to its decline. Ingrid

zxcvbob wrote:
I have a semi-dwarf apple tree, about 8 years old, on M7 rootstock, I
think. It is about 15 feet tall, pruned as a modified central leader. It
is heavier on the south side because it is growing away from a big maple
tree that crowds it a little on the north.

It has way too many small branches, and apple production has been declining
for the past couple of years. There are only maybe a 6 or 8 apples this
year, and I'm willing to pull them all off to help break the cycle of the
apple maggots that cause so much damage every year. This tree should be
able to produce 150 or more apples every year.

I'm looking for information about how to prune the tree to encourage fruit
spur production instead of new wood. All the pruning guides I find on the
web only tell about the importance of training the scaffold branches. I
already know that. I've read about it in a book on pruning espalair or
cordon fruit trees, but that was a long time ago. I dunno if I even
spelled that right. IIRC, summer pruning instead of the usual late winter
pruning promotes fruit spur production.

I am also thinking about air layering one of the many vertical growing
branches to grow an own-root standard apple tree. I already know how to do
that, but I'm not sure if it's too late to start this year to get a good
enough root system to survive the winter. I also don't know how well apple
trees grow on their own roots rather than grafted rootstock -- but I think
it should give a longer lived tree and full sized tree.

Thanks, regards,
Bob



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