The Pruning Of The Unprunable

It shall all be fine unless it snows

— he said.

Crickets.

But dormant. Because it's winter.

Just a flashback to my previous visit's results before we go on with today's topic.

Some more dormant crickets here. For dramatic effect...

Greetings, fellow Garden Rounders and Grounders!

Have you pruned anything this winter? I tried to, today. Many a story among plants shall tell of this day of undeserved humanly vengeance upon orchard inhabitants who have been neglected for quite a while...

Now...I hadn't pruned any trees before and I went through some quantity of tutorials until I was sure I understand what had to be done and why.

I shall share with you some of the basic principles that I learned (in theory).

Just look for the bold and larger letters here and there in the article.

I expected things to go smoothly but...well...technical issues and then time issues...

I was still able to do most of two things.

Butcher invigorate some old trees with quite a lot of dry branches and prone to crowd-up tightly around their centers, so...

Prune the prone!

After. Sorry, the Before shot was quite bad and I might have lost deleted it.

After the first stage, that is. One of my instruments turned out to be quite fake and I lost its limb to a bit of reciprocal force applied from the tree. Besides...I would need a ladder for this one. It's the silhouette of a middle-aged peach tree.

What to remove — The DDD rule says Dead, Dying, Disease-ridden branches. The CAC rule says Crossing (atop each other) branches, branches at Acute angles with each other, and Clustered branches. Try and keep about two thirds of the biomass of the canopy.

The first rule concerns obviously pointless excess strain on the plant to provide energy where it shall be wasted. The second rule concerns the future (when there be leaves and fruit) air circulation and light availability. And the energy again, of course.

Here's a dry one. Gotta go.

Then I was off tho the remnants of the vineyard. Trying to make it produce at least one more year before probably replacing it with another orchard. Why? Because I'm into more self-sustainable plants and longer-lasting ones. Even though they shall still need some help at the beginning, perhaps some of the trees I plant shall outlive me.

So, anyway, the vineyard...

Cut above two or three buds on a newly formed trellis from last year and cut off the older one completely.

Vines are usually quite productive and a lot of biomass shall sprout forward in a month or two...or three. So I have to keep it a bit less. Seriously a bit less. So that the plant can sustain whatever comes out.

And I am a harsh coach. I train my plant team for desert-like conditions.

So, if I mislead you into believing I was close to done with these tasks...

...just taje a look at my next Before shot.

Another time, perhaps. About a dozen trees and more than a dozen vines took part in this experiment. Enough pain for a day. Only time shall tell if I rather helped or harmed my subjects.

Peace and Parsley!

Yours,

Manol