Fruit Tree Pruning

Apologies for a missed post last night, we were pre-occupied by broody hen, eggs and relocation, relocation - but we will save that for another post.

As our fruit trees are still very young, none of them have been pruned since we planted them. From what we have heard, Febuary is the time to do this but as the weather has been so mild this winter and we had such a gorgeous day, we decided to tackle the task at hand and give it a go.

Having some idea, we wished to verify our facts and turned to "you-tube" to see what others had to say. There were so many posts - verbally and visually, not that helpful, until we came across this guy living in Israel, who has tended to an orchard for 15 years of his life, we enjoyed his explanations for making certain cuts and over all, it gave us the confidence to go out and give our trees a pruning. Perhaps you might find his link helpful too. Part 1 and this is Part 2

Apologies we were so involved in pruning that there are only after pictures, we are feeling very pleased with our work and hope our trees are feeling lighter for their shaping and now have more energy and strength to bear fruit.

Last Sunday I had a wonderful walk,  on the top side of Cedros and came across an old ruin and a couple of lemon trees - and along side the lemon trees were many willow trees. These are grown for their branches to make baskets to harvest, corn, grapes etc. What I did observe was the use of willow branches to hold down the boughs of the lemon tree in order to keep the "goblet" shape open, for easy access to the fruit, more light and less chance of disease.