Do you know how to prune your fruit trees?

Some principles to always respect:

· To form and maintain a solid framework, which can bear all the fruits.
· Know and respect the natural laws of vegetation with, of course, the principles that flow from them.
· Know how to recognize and differentiate flower eyes from wood eyes.

Form a solid framework

There are many forms resulting from the evolution of techniques.
Personally, I prefer free shapes like pyramids* or free fruit hedges to trained shapes like horizontal cordons because they respect the natural shapes of the trees much better.
A framework consists of:
· From the trunk, more or less long but whose length will never vary.
· From the main, central axis which is the natural extension of the trunk. It is the terminal bud that dominates the shape of the tree.
· The main or carpenter branches, which must be well distributed in space, in order to leave air passages which will ensure the ventilation of the leaves and fruits and thus less parasitism. These branches must be “subjected” to the axis.
· The secondary branches, or sub-frames that equip the main branches, always outwards, without overlapping or crossing each other and remaining subject to their main branch.
· The fruiting ramifications, which will bear fruit, distributed on either side of the secondary branches.
It is by choosing and limiting these fruit ramifications that we can limit the number of flowers and therefore of fruits, and have well-formed, calibrated and colored fruits.

Respect the natural laws of vegetation

The eye (the bud), terminal must remain the best irrigated part and therefore dominant. There are several ways to enforce this hierarchy, especially if you have to prune the terminal branch and thus open up competition. It is then necessary to “sharpen the tips”, i.e. to remove all the branches located just below the branch chosen as an extension over several tens of cm, it depends on the competition that these branches could make with the top branch, depending on their insertion or vigor.

waist veil

This is why we draw a veil of imaginary size which defines the limit where the branches are, according to their position and their vigor, subject to the terminal or competing bud.
For example, it is possible to bring the top of the tree back to a side branch 2 or 3 years old and remove what grows above. It will then be necessary to eliminate the competition by removing all the branches located in a position to take over the arrow.
This is where the concept of the size veil came from:
We draw an imaginary cone with the last eye of the arrow as its apex with a more or less open angle that encompasses the natural shape of the tree.
From the top we then imagine a shape resembling what we would see between window curtains (old style).
It is necessary to remove or shorten the branches which come out of this veil just like the greedy ones, young branches which are born directly on the axis or on the main branches and which compete with the other branches or the branches which are directed towards the interior of the tree. ‘tree.

Fruiting:

The subject will be developed next week for stone fruit trees.

* Pyramid, fruit form: starting form given by nurserymen to low form (dwarf) fruit trees which consists of an axis and 5 branches which will form the framework of the tree. This form can be made on a tree in stem or half stem.

Ask all your questions during the gardening program on Sunday morning on France bleu Isère from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. by calling 04 76 46 45 45.


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