Spring pruning

As a novice to fruit trees and berries, I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the prospect of pruning.  Reading books and articles online only seem to confuse me more than clarify things.  I've come to the conclusion that pruning is much more an art than a science, which means it can only really be learned through seeing and doing.

According to my great grandpa, the best time to prune apple trees is "anytime you have a pocket knife". In other words, it's more important THAT you prune than that you do it at exactly the right time or just the right way.  This reminds me of the trepidation I felt before I tried asparagus.  The books talked about prepping your bed at least a year in advance, working in compost and eliminating all the weeds.  Then you had to dig this deep, perfect trench where you carefully lay the root, spread out the fibers, and then slowly fill dirt over the coming weeks as the roots start to grow.  A neighbor that raises asparagus commercially told me to ignore all that, did a trench, drop the roots in the bottom, and then cover them up with dirt.  So that's what we did and wouldn't you know it, almost every one came up and they look beautiful.  I've come to the conclusion that with gardening, it's easy to over analyze things.

With that said, I pruned the orchard, grape vines, and blackberries.  This was my first time pruning the trees and vibes since I planted them 3 years ago.  The biggest lesson I got from YouTube clips was to prune anything that looked diseased, clip any lateral branches that are at a bad angle (ideally, you want your laterals to come out from the main trunk at 90 degree angle), and to clip limbs that are going to invade another branche's space.  The goal is to have an evenly balanced tree where each branch gets air and sunlight.

The grapes seem a little more self explanatory.  I trim everything back to 2 to 3 main stalks.  My goal is to be very aggressive with the grapes since they get such prolific growth during the summer.  Grapes need ventilation, so you don't want them to become a mob of tangled branches year after year because then it will be nearly impossible to prune.

With raspberries, I cut them right off at the ground.  It does mean you won't get berries until later on th summer, but it also means you have very nice growth each year.  I did leave a few raspberries long and just trimmed the ends so as to have a few plants producing early snack berries.

The thornless blackberries were pruned much like the grapes, with me pruning back to only one main stalk.  Some of the laterals can get very large and branch out very near the base, so it's important to get down on the hands and knees and trim them off.  The only mistake I might have made was not leaving some of the upper laterals a few inches long rather than trimming them flush with the main branch.  I guess we'll see how the plant does this summer.  I was pleased, regardless, that the thornless berries , which are traditionally not as cold hearty, seemed to have survived the bitterly long and cold winter well.  

The thorny blackberries are a different story.  You are supposed to trim out all canes that were two years old last bearing season.  These berries are designed to bear on second year canes. The problem is that many of my first year canes also put berries on late in the first year, but not early enough to ripen before fall/winter sets in.  As a result, most if my canes have berries on them and it's difficult to determine which are 1st year and which are 2nd year canes.  I decided to take out the larges canes and anything that looked diseased or dead.  I think you can tell the second year canes by the large laterals that have developed off the main cane.  This fall I think I'm going to have to mark te second year canes after bearing or just trim them off right away so I know which is which.

We are supposed to be getting 45 blueberry plants this spring.  Like asparagus, all the books say you need to get your planting beds ready a year in advance so you can get that ph set right.  I've decided to just take my chances.  I'll work up the ground, incorporate peat moss and sulfur and compost around each plant, and then keep them watered and weeded.  Blueberries have shallow roots, which means you have to be careful when disturbing the soil around them.  It also means you can too dress the roots with sulfur in the fall to also help get the ph to the desired level.  We'll see if we're as successful with the blueberries as we were with asparagus.

Speaking of asparagus, we chopped off all the dried out stalks this week and piled them in the compost pile.  This is the third year for the asparagus, which means we finally get to start harvesting and eating it.  We're very excited, and also interested to see how far 270 roots will go.

Grapes before pruning

Grapes after pruning

Asparagus

Asparagus after clearing tops

Raspberries before pruning

Raspberries after pruning--note I pull the mulch to the outside to encourage new shoots in the inner half of the row

I left a few raspberries longer to have a few earlier berries

Ground underneath mulch in raspberry patch

Trim those canes off right at the ground

Thorny blackberries before pruning--what a mess

Thorny blackberries after pruning

Thornless blackberries after pruning

I'm limiting the thornless blackberries to three canes

I put our compost piles in the center of the garden.  The one closest is last year's pile that we top dressed with leaves.  The one in the back is the new compost pile.  I started with the asparagus tops and then added sweetcorn stalks, which I pulled out by the roots to hold the asparagus tops down and to add rich microbes through the soil left on the roots.