Thursday, June 19, 2014

Back to Eden style fruit tree pruning


I love Paul Gautschi's way of pruning fruit trees. After watching his pruning videos, I ran straight out with my pruners and saw and started cutting. All in all I am really happy with it. I can see that I did it right and when it bears fruit it will take on the classic Paul style of drooping bent branches. They really look like Halloween trees to me. I love them. 

Lesson learned...get a super sharp pruning saw like Paul's. Mine really ratched parts of my tree, but it will heal.





7 comments:

Annie's Journal said...

We watched the video too...Isn't it interesting and so easy to follow! Can't wait for the time that we can put that into practice on our fruit trees too:) Keep having fun in your garden:)

Erin said...

It was really fun!! Who knew pruning could be a blast.

Caro said...

Just watched the video - thanks for the link, Erin. It all seems to make sense and I'm going to give his method a go on my plum trees as they're getting very tall and the tiny fruits always fall off - lack of light? Perhaps, let's see!

Erin said...

Caro!! I lost all of my plums too. It started put with hundreds and now I have 13. I did some reading and found out the Japanese Plums need a pollinator. Who knew? So I am getting a purple Japanese Plum to pollinate it. Yummmmm.

Caro said...

Hi Erin! I had to look up Japanese plum (prunus salicina); it appears to be a variety unfamiliar to European soil. My plum trees are Victoria plum, a well known English variety which is self-pollinating, although I do have two trees. I think it might do better if I had another type of plum to pollinate it and certainly I'll be giving it a good summer prune in the style of the video - I love the final look of those trees - but I think the trees in the video are all apples?

Erin said...

I think they are all apples too Caro. Aren't they just so beautiful pruned that way.

Erin said...

I did end up getting a set of Felco pruners and the Samarai saw that Paul uses.