Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
-EP269 Susan Poizner Orchard People On Pruning Fruit Trees, Fruit Tree Care and More
Discover the secrets of thriving fruit trees with Susan Poizner, founder of Orchard People and author of multiple books on fruit tree care. In this comprehensive conversation, Susan shares her remarkable journey from BBC journalist to fruit tree expert, sparked by a community orchard project that taught her valuable lessons through trial and error.
Susan reveals the often-misunderstood purpose of pruning – not merely for size control, but as the essential foundation for disease prevention and quality fruit production. She expertly breaks down the science behind why proper pruning creates a healthier environment within the tree canopy, preventing the damp, dark conditions that fungal diseases thrive in. You'll learn the crucial differences between winter pruning (which stimulates growth) and summer pruning (which controls size), plus how to choose between open center and central leader structures based on your local climate conditions.
Beyond pruning, Susan shares practical wisdom on combating common fruit tree challenges like apple maggot, codling moth, and canker. Her innovative solutions include dormant oil sprays, orchard socks for pest prevention, and proper cleanup practices that break disease cycles. You'll discover why soil preparation matters tremendously and how annual compost application supports tree health from the roots up.
Most fascinating is Susan's insight that truly healthy trees naturally repel pests and diseases. By understanding and working with your trees' natural biology, you can create resilient fruit trees that produce abundantly with minimal intervention.
Whether you're an experienced orchardist or planning your first fruit tree, this episode provides the essential knowledge to form a successful partnership with these generous plants that can provide beauty and bounty for decades to come. Ready to transform your relationship with fruit trees? This conversation is your perfect starting point.
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
how's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 269 of master my garden podcast. Now, as I said last week, we're going to be chatting all things fruit trees this week and to do that I'm too delighted to be joined by sus Poisoner, and Susan is the educator. She talks all things fruit trees on the orchard people. So she has written several books on fruit tree care and she has a recent book which we'll chat about, and she runs online courses on pruning fruit trees and general fruit tree care. So this is going to be a pretty deep topic of you know looking after fruit trees. So we've going to be a pretty deep topic of you know looking after fruit trees.
Speaker 1:So we've spoke many times on the podcast about creating orchards, about picking and choosing correct varieties. We've recommended certain varieties. So now we're going to, I suppose, a slightly different angle on it, which is the aftercare of fruit trees. It's a hugely important piece because planting the fruit tree is one part of ensuring that you have healthy fruit down the line. The second part of it is the aftercare, particularly the pruning as you go through the various years. So, susan, you're very, very welcome to Master my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. So lots all of your work centers around fruit trees. So we have, as I said, we have fruit tree care books. We have the YouTube channel, the Orchard People. We have a monthly podcast on care for fruit trees, and so you do your online courses, training both home owners, arborists all about fruit tree creation. So you're going into this in a very, very deep level. So tell us a little bit about the backstory of the Archer People before we get into how we actually do this and care for our fruit trees.
Speaker 2:John. It's a crazy and very funny story, I think, because most of my life I did not do any gardening, nothing. I was a journalist. I worked for the BBC World Service. I used to live in the UK doing Russian language educational programs. I don't know how I came to this, but I do. So go back to Russian, how I came to this, but I do Russian, russian, russian, yeah, russian educational radio programs to this. But I guess what happened was I lived in the UK for many years and I came back to Toronto to my parents were aging, it was time and I was not married at that time. And I came back and I met my husband, cliff, here, and Cliff is from Trinidad Originally, you know, when he left, when he was nine. And so in Trinidad, john, you just like throw a seed down in a tree grows and you get mangoes right, you know like whatever, or avocados, he remembers growing avocados.
Speaker 2:So he moved in with me and I had a backyard and he's like, oh, this is a good backyard, can I plant something? Like let's plant something. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I know what's going to happen. You're going to go all out, you're going to plant everything and I'm going to have to take care of it. And I don't do that. So anyways, long story short, he I said, okay, fine, you can do like five tomato plants. And I left the house and I come back, the entire garden is planted up with God knows everything.
Speaker 2:But I fell in love with gardening, so much so that I got a little diverted. I signed up for a landscape design course to try and like just to understand more about plants and about design, and during that course I realized there was one thing that captivated me, and that was trees. Because, like I love vegetables, I love growing veggies and flowers, but trees are like these beings. They come back year after year Like they're there. They're there. It's not like a zucchini plant at come back year after year Like they're there. They're there. It's not like a zucchini plant. At the end of the season, you dig it out and you, you know, throw it in the compost. So these trees? I started to look at trees on the street so differently and then it just dawned on me that there are fruit trees, that they don't just look beautiful, shade our communities, clean our air, but they also feed us. These are the most generous beings ever and they can live up to like over 100 years. And I was fascinated.
Speaker 2:Long story short, I ended up starting a community orchard in my local park and planted these trees, and at that point I was an organic gardener. I kind of knew what I was doing and I thought that the fruit trees would be easy and please, john, don't laugh, because they're so not easy and I planted these trees. The whole community was looking. This had to be a success. Some people didn't even want this project. So I knew I had to be meticulous. And then the trees got sick, and then they weren't growing well, well, and then the fruit wasn't good and I had to go and use my journalistic skills to figure out what was going wrong. And how do I take care of these trees? What is the minimum I need to do to keep these trees healthy and productive? So that started my journey.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's an interesting story. Just go back to community garden. You created a community fruit garden. How many trees are we talking here? Is this a big? Is this big garden? Is it?
Speaker 2:the park is not huge. Um, it's more of a parkette. But the original plan that I worked on with my city councillor and our park supervisor was to have, I think it was, 28 or 34 trees. Um, there was a community uprising a petition against having a fruit farm in the park, and so we went through all the process of, you know, negotiating whatever. In the end, we were allowed to plant, I think 14 or 18 trees. To be honest, I don't count anymore because I think about 15 years ago, well, the agreement was blah, blah, blah. I don't know how many trees we have. We have as many as we have. We've got apricots, we've got apples, we've got Asian pears, we have plums, service berries, all sorts of good stuff there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super, the community gardens that allow fruit trees in. It's a win-win across so many levels, because fruit trees in the, in the flowering stage, can be extremely beautiful. So you're, you're ticking that box. Obviously from the, from the point of view of biodiversity you know, flower again useful for your pollinators and so on and they are a fruit tree is very, very beautiful and it's it's filling the like. We've spoke on the podcast over the last couple of weeks about trees in urban environments, particularly from the point of view of shade water. You're slowing down water and all of those things, but fruit trees will do that and give the extra benefit of having some food available from them. So they really are. It's not something that's adapted very much here in Ireland yet, but it's something that I really hope does, because it's doing exactly what all other trees do, plus the extra bonus on the end of it. So it's great.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to inject here a little warning. So people used to talk to me like you know, you're the fruit tree lady. You love fruit trees and I do love fruit trees, but I don't believe in planting them willy-nilly. So I think it's great to plant fruit trees, I think our project is incredible and other community orchard projects are incredible. Fruit trees I think our project is incredible and other community orchard projects are incredible.
Speaker 2:But you can only be successful with fruit trees if you care for them. So when I first started doing fruit tree care education, there was one line I was teaching people. I thought if I can teach people this one thing, I am successful. Because it was just it. People were oblivious. And the one line is fruit trees need hands-on care. So if people can understand that then they can plant fruit trees, because then they'll say, okay, what's the hands-on care they need? Of course they need mulching. That's fine.
Speaker 2:But without correct feeding, pruning, pest and disease protection they can be very messy. And the worst part is if you have a messy, unhealthy fruit tree in your backyard and somebody else is lovingly caring for their fruit tree a few yards over or even a few blocks over the pest and disease problems that your trees attract will affect everybody. So it is like having a baby. It's time commitment, right, it's a lifetime commitment. And it's like I don't have babies, but I'm sure if I did, I would get a book saying how do you care for this baby, like, how do you change a diaper, how do you help them and nurture them? Right. And fruit trees are very similar. So that's why I find it interesting that you say, oh my gosh, you've got this huge body of work all around fruit trees and it's true, and I keep getting deeper and deeper into it Because they are these incredibly beautiful but complex beings. Then there's so much more to learn. Saying that there is a minimum that you can learn in order to grow healthy and productive fruit trees.
Speaker 1:You don't have to go deep into the, the weeds, like I have yeah, so yeah, I suppose that's that's something that I like to convey on the podcast. So it's, we talk a lot about, about growing, growing food on the podcast, and obviously fruit trees have come up a lot because, as you said, they're a year-on-year really good source of food, so long as you get the basic care principles right. So let's talk about those basic care principles. We, as you said, you have a big body of work. There is levels to all of this, but let's, let's talk about, as you said, the minimum, the minimum that somebody needs to care for fruit trees, and maybe we'll get into the individual pruning and so on.
Speaker 2:It's funny because we were growing our fruit trees in a public park and in the public park we were told no sprays, like certainly no toxic sprays, no pesticides, no fungicides. And I'm like, oh, that's fine, I want to grow organically, not knowing that fruit trees just they are a magnet for certain diseases. Each tree has a finite number of diseases it can get, like the diseases that apple trees get aren't the same as the ones that plum trees get. But what I did learn after a year, a few years of, you know, getting confused, I brought in people to teach us and the first and most important thing that I learned was pruning. The reason is pruning. People think, oh, it's just to make your tree smaller, so that when your tree is, you know, old and it's too high, you just cut it a little bit. And that's maybe one goal of pruning, but not the main goal. The main goal of pruning is to keep your tree healthy and productive, so healthy in terms of preventing disease. Wow, how does pruning prevent disease? That was the first thing I had to get my head around. And the second thing is how would cutting off branches make my tree more productive and produce better quality fruit? So let's go into each of those. How does pruning make your tree healthier? How does it make it more resistant to disease?
Speaker 2:Well, I like to talk about air circulation. If your fruit tree has a whole tangle of branches that once they leaf out they're all tightly, you know, curled up together, all the branches and the leaves are touching each other. Then when it rains and you guys live in a rainy climate, I'm sure rainier than us when it rains, fungal spores hang out in the canopy. They love it. It's dark, it's damp and they're like this is heaven, I love being in this tree and then you get fungal diseases, like rust, which you get in apples and pears. Basically, I think 80% of all the diseases that fruit trees get are fungal diseases 80%. Okay. So that's what happens when the canopy is crowded.
Speaker 2:But if you start to selectively remove branches not trim them at the edges and like, do a circle around your tree to make it look like a lollipop, not that, but remove entire branches from the inside of your tree you're opening it up for air circulation. And if there's good air circulation, then the air blows in and dries out the canopy. And to make it even better, if you prune correctly, and not only is there good air circulation, but there's also sunlight penetration. The sun will dry the canopy too. So with correct pruning you are taking out a whole bunch of potential problems.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about fruit production. Why would correct pruning help your tree produce better quality fruit? Well, let's think about you. Okay, you wake up in the morning, you've got 10 jobs to do. If you do all 10 jobs, you are going to be running around all day. You're going to be exhausted and you probably won't do each job really really well. But if you say you know what, today I'm going to focus on just seven jobs and the other three I'll save till tomorrow, you'll have time to do them better.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing with fruit trees. They have a finite amount of energy, especially in the early spring when they're doing a whole bunch of work they're opening their buds, they are making blossoms, they're creating fruit. So at that time of year, if they have a whole bunch of branches to feed with energy from their root system, then each branch will get a little bit of energy. It'll grow a teeny tiny bit, maybe more than a bit or whatever, and it'll have some energy for fruit, but not a lot. But if you selectively remove some of those branches, then all of a sudden, the remaining branches get more energy, they can grow longer, they can be stronger and they can produce better quality fruit. There's some more nuances there, but that is the broad.
Speaker 1:That is just an easy way to look at why pruning helps so much and why it is the cornerstone of how you care for your fruit trees way of putting it, especially on the disease part, because you're right in that a lot of people view pruning as the shaping of the tree, which it it is to a certain extent, but if you've chosen the right rootstock and so on, that's not really true. You should be, you should be working with something that's suitable for your garden anyway. So then it comes down to fruit production, which, again, you know, most people know about, but yeah, that's something I knew. But to have it pointed out like that is is really good. So by doing correct pruning you're opening, opening up and not allowing, I suppose, havens for, for fungal diseases. That's. It's very well put.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you, and I have to explain this a lot, and so I kind of think of because it's so counterintuitive. It's like once I was teaching I went to Virginia in the States to teach some arborists about pruning and for some bizarre reason they wanted me to do the pruning demo before teaching people why you do this pruning. So there's all these arborists standing around and I'm like starting to demo by pruning a very young tree, like I was a young apricot or some peach or something and I go in with my hand pruners and I'm demonstrating, I'm explaining how I'm going to take off an entire branch, like this tree has maybe 10 branches, and I go in and I'm cutting off one of these young, healthy branches. One of the arborists almost pulled me back to stop me. She said don't do that, it's a healthy branch. Why are you doing that? And that's the other mind blowing thing about pruning you are taking beautiful, healthy branches and you're cutting them off and throwing them away. So there's just a bit of a change in mindset.
Speaker 1:That's necessary bit of a change in mindset that's necessary, yeah. So when you know the how-to part of pruning, what are so? Obviously we're looking to open up the center, so what and how do we go about pruning?
Speaker 2:say, a two, three-year-old apple tree, for example. Well, here's then. This is the thing. Now there's two structures. One structure is what you discussed, which may be popular over there, and it's the open center. So your tree ends up looking like a goblet or a cup and there's no central branch in the middle. And then there's a secondary structure which is called central leader, where you have one branch in the middle and you're creating a sort of Christmas tree shape. There's pros and cons for both of those. They are both very fruitful. You're producing fruit. Central leader can be a little bit sturdier in a windy climate, whereas open center gets these long branches that in a wind, like a heavy wind, the branches can easily break and then, whoops, you've lost a whole. You know it's a whole big deal with with, uh, central leader it's sturdier.
Speaker 2:But now you say how would you prune a two or three year old apple tree? Let's take it back ultimately, john, and if you've been talking about rootstocks, you've probably been talking encouraging people to plant bare root trees which are not in a pot, which are very young. So the ideal way is to prune your fruit tree the first time you prune. It is on the day you plant your bare root tree the very day. So you plant the bare root tree in the ground, you water it in and you make something called a whip cut. So your tree a bare root tree that's young just looks like a stick or a branch with roots. There's no side branches, and that's ideal. That's what you want the youngest tree possible. Because it's like sculpting. You're sculpting your perfect structure for a tree.
Speaker 2:So you do your whip cut. You probably are cutting off the top third of the tree at least, and often you are cutting it up to oh goodness, I'm going to say in inches. Let's say you'll cut it at 34 inches off the ground, not sure, okay. So then what you're doing is, by removing the top of that whip, you are removing the hormones. They are called auxin hormones. Auxin hormones make it go up higher and higher. They pull the tips higher and higher. But what happens is, when you cut off those auxin hormones, it gives the side buds an opportunity to flourish, right, because that auxin is very domineering. It's like you, side buds, you don't do much. I'm gonna lead here. Once you get rid of the auxins, the side buds start opening up and you start getting side branches, and so what you would do is that year.
Speaker 2:So you do your whip cut in year one and in year two you choose your scaffold branches, your side branches, out of the options the tree gives you. You're not going to keep any side branches that are below your knee because that's too low for fruit. Okay, depending on which structure you're using, you are going to choose and let's talk about open center. You will choose to choose, and let's talk about open center. You will choose three to five scaffold branches near the top they should be a couple of inches apart, maybe you know so that it just keeps it more sturdy and each of those branches will go in a different direction. So if there's four of them, it could be one goes north, one goes south, one goes east, one goes west, but they all have to be in a different direction, not, you know, three, four of them on one side and one on the other, and those you will nurture to become your structure. So the problem is, if people wait until year two or three, you've missed the opportunity to sculpt your tree into the ideal structure.
Speaker 2:You can still prune it, and you should, but now, once the tree is older, what I tell people to do is learn how to do the structure and then adapt it to your tree. So sometimes you can take an established tree and look at it and say, okay, I can make this into a central leader tree. This is how. But even if you can't, once you understand all the science behind pruning, you can look at any tree, even like a 20-year-old tree that's been neglected, and slowly renovate it so that it is a healthy and productive tree. I'll just throw one more thing in.
Speaker 2:If you're pruning an older tree tree, I'll just say one, throw one more thing in. If you're pruning an older tree any like older than three, four years old, you can only prune off 25% of the canopy. So let's say you buy my book Fruit Tree Pruning it's called Fruit Tree Pruning, the science and art of cultivating healthy fruit trees. You buy my book and you read it. Then you're looking at your tree and say, okay, I can make that shape, I can do do this. But if you do it all in one year it'll freak out your tree. You have to do it slowly. So 25 of you know, correcting the structure one year and then wait for it to grow and then the next year do another 25 and in four years you're going to have the perfect structure and a really healthy tree that produces great fruit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting and loads, loads in there. I've got to go back to your very, your very original point. It's funny the goblet style open center pruning is the most popular here, is the most popular here. And it's interesting that you say it's less suited to a windy climate because we are, and increasingly so, we're getting a lot of wind. Well, we've always had wind, but recently we've been getting quite storm-like conditions, um, on a more regular basis. So it would seem, then, that you know the, the amount of fruit trees that are in, that you know that open center are not ideally suited to the changing climate. So maybe we'll just delve a little bit further into the, into the center.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me. Yeah, well, let's okay. So I love that you made that point and thank you so much for sharing that with me. The benefit of the goblet of the open center structure is another thing that you guys have, which is a really wet climate. You can't do better at keeping the canopy dry than that open center shape. That's why your growers there do that shape and I guess they're willing, or at least maybe you say the wind is getting worse and worse, so maybe they were willing to put up with the wind. You know, if you have to, if you've only got one backyard tree, there are ways that you can support long branches with. You know, wooden setups I'm not much of a woodworker, but yes, so that's interesting. So on the one hand, it's so great for the open canopy, is great for wet climates, but now let's talk about windy climates. So here's what happens with central leader. You have this one central trunk that turns into the top branch, one central trunk that turns into the top branch, and you have, let's say, two or three I call them platforms on it. So you're doing the whip cut in year one, but each year you select, let's say, four branches in different directions north, south, east, west, but the leader With open center, you're getting rid of the leader. There's no leader. Then you let the leader go up a little bit further, so you've got the first platform. It's at, let's say, knee height. You let your leader go up further and, let's say, at my waist height I can have platform two, another four, let's say four branches going in slightly different directions so they're not shading the ones below it. Then, finally, if I want the third platform, it can be at my shoulders. And this is just. It depends on the rootstock. You have the size of the tree, the vigor of the tree. The idea is there that you have about two feet of open space between platforms where the trunk is clean, there's no branches. If anything pops up, you're snipping it off. Even rubbing it off with the tree is young. You could take your finger. You can rub off the little shoots if they're in the wrong place.
Speaker 2:Now, why does this structure? Why is it so strong? Because you get more branches and they're shorter. Each time you head back or shorten a branch, you are again. That branch has limited amount of energy. So you are shortening the branch to fit into your triangle shape.
Speaker 2:Because you have three platforms. The top platform is sort of smaller than the middle one and the middle one is smaller than the bottom one. So it's like a triangle and each time you shorten a branch to fit into that structure, there is more energy in the remaining buds and the branch is able to thicken up more. It just has more energy for everything, for fruit, for thickening up, which is called secondary tree growth. So you get this kind of like stout little, strong, little muscular tree. So I'm tall and willowy, right, I'm kind of tall, I got long arms, I got long legs. My husband is sort of shorter and he's like he's got lots of strength right and it's because of his structure's got shorter branches. He's got shorter arms but stronger, uh, you know, upper body, shorter legs. So that's the difference between open center and central leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it strikes me. So, yeah, that makes sense. Now that the the reason like we are a very wet place on and I, yeah, I guess it comes to a balance and act, which one is worse? And I would say the damp is certainly, certainly whiter. They're all gone for the goblet, the goblet style pruning, I think from a back, a backyard perspective, which most of the listeners are, you know. Uh, I think the goblet style probably suits better as well, because in my head I'm thinking at at maturity, it's a lot smaller in terms of height to manage, I would imagine. Am I correct, that's?
Speaker 2:interesting because chair, like, for instance, cherry trees oh my god, they get big, you know, um. And and also the time of year is important when you prune in order to reduce size, and we can talk about that. That makes a big difference. But there's some trees like, yeah, like I, like your point, um, I guess, if you want to keep it, I would love. If I lived in ireland I would do an experiment and if I had enough space, I would experiment with some central leader trees, because they do. They are also good for air circulation, but I suppose you know, because it has platforms, even though these branches don't exactly they shouldn't shade each other out. Maybe it would retain a little bit more moisture. Yeah, it's like you say you, you have to pick one, the lesser evil and decide which one to go for.
Speaker 2:But yeah, if you are, if your concern is and it should be the the next thing that we should probably talk about is how do you keep a tree smaller? And it has to do with the time of year that you prune. So, for instance, we talked a little bit about the energy of a fruit tree in the winter. So the winter the fruit tree has energy in its root systems. The previous year it had leaves. It made lots of energy through photosynthesis and in the fall, when you see the leaf color changes, that's because it's pulling the energy out of the leaves and putting it in the roots so it stores. It's like a little pantry. Over the winter You've got all your goodies in your root system and then the spring comes and that's when that energy comes up and it powers the growth of the buds and the blossoms in the fruit. Energy comes up and it powers the growth of the buds and the blossoms in the fruit. So that's why I explained earlier that if you remove let's say you have 10 branches if you remove three of those branches, each of the remaining branches will be longer and stronger. So winter pruning stimulates growth. It makes a small. If you plant a young tree and you want it to grow faster and bigger, that's a good time to do it. But if you take a cherry tree that is already too big and you're like, okay, I'm going to do some winter pruning on this tree, what's going to happen? The cherry tree has big roots with lots of energy and you're removing some branches to create your structure, or even you know if you're making it into a lollipop, whatever you're doing with it, you know trimming around the edge or whatever you're doing. You don't know what you're doing. Let's say, what's going to happen is it's going to stimulate even more growth because it's got all this energy in its root system. It's winter and it'll have fewer buds, fewer branches, so each branch will grow more. But here's what happens If you wait. So you let the season start, you let the cherry tree or which it can be, a big old apple tree or anything bring up the energy and power, growth of blossoms and even fruit. You let it do its thing's running a marathon, it's just running, running, running, running. And then, after blossom time, after the petal falls, petals fall, then you start pruning. It doesn't have as much energy to bounce back. It's already used up its energy. With this marathon you're cutting off the energy you. You're cutting off branches with, you know, spent blossoms and baby fruitlets even on it.
Speaker 2:With our cherry trees in particular, because here we get cherries in the beginning of July, it's not too late to prune them. So we take because our trees are big despite all the pruning we take our pole pruners and we remove entire branches, knowing that they're not part of our structure with the cherries on them, so that we can get the high up cherries and we share it with the community. We have a lot of fun. But at that point the tree is not going to grow bigger and bigger for two reasons. One, it doesn't have lots of energy in the root system to power that. It's now making energy out of the leaves.
Speaker 2:But the second thing is hormones have shifted. The auxin hormones that make branches longer were active in the winter At this point. Auxin hormones, they're not so active. But there's I think it's called cytokinins, I'm probably not pronouncing it right there's hormones that become active in the summer that tell the tree hey, this is a good time to put energy towards buds for fruit for next year. So essentially, when you prune in the summer, the energy is going to go to fruit production. So everything we're doing, john, with our tree is a partnership. We are working with it, with the science, so that we understand it, so we can have what everybody wants. Even the tree wants to be healthy and productive. It wants to fulfill its purpose, um, so we're working together, knowing and understanding how the trees work, to have a healthy tree and, uh, quality harvest yeah, man, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:they sense, I suppose, as we head for the end of March here what, and we maybe look at the. So cherries we do grow here, but they typically they're in certain parts of the country or they're undercover. And what are most popular fruit trees here, I guess, are apples, as you would expect, plums, certainly popular as well, and pears to a certain extent, and again that can be quite regional. They do better in certain parts of the country. So, looking at the main tree types of fruit here, ideal pruning periods for those three.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, that's so brilliant. Okay, plums are very much like cherries. Often not always. Sometimes they have these long, swooping branches that just want to be open center. The way they grow, sometimes depending on the cultivar, depending on the rootstock, whatever they grow to, the open center structure Plums everyone that I've ever worked with are vigorous. So that means that in the first three years of formative pruning it's called formative pruning in the first three years you probably will winter prune it because you want it to create a structure quickly. So you know, in my book I outline the stages each year. What you do Stage one is year one is whip cut. What you do year two and year three. So you create the structure in the winter in the first three years. After that, once it reaches the size you want it to reach, then you summer prune.
Speaker 2:We love pruning in our park. It is the funnest thing that we do. It is such a wonderful interactive thing. I went to the park and I thought, man, we have like zero to winter prune now Nothing, hardly anything. And so here I've got this team of people, everybody's going to have a hand pruner, everybody wants to do the formative pruning, which is the funnest part, and there's like only cleanup pruning to do, and that's mostly in the summer. So here we're going to all stand around three trees and say, okay, what cuts will we make, and then it'll take five minutes, it'll be done. So the older trees use summer prune Okay, and not. The older trees use summer prune okay, and not on a rainy day, by the way. You keep it dry, because again fungal diseases can go in those cuts.
Speaker 2:So apples, similar apples, mostly the ones that we grow here, except for certain disease resistant varieties, are pretty slow growing for the first three to five years. We winter prune the first three years. We years, we winter prune the first three years. We're creating the structure and the way we did it because we didn't really know what we were doing at first. It maybe took five years to create the structure.
Speaker 2:After that you look and see how branchy is this tree. If it's got a million branches and sort of water sprouts sticking up for upward, you know sprouts on all the branches summer prune. There's too many branches. You want to keep that open structure, summer prune. And then we were talking about pears. Pears are similar to apples in that they can be slow growing. Some pears are interesting, like Asian pears. They don't really need a lot of pruning sometimes. Sometimes they just don't grow a lot of branches. They keep growing spurs like a fruiting spurs. We've got an Asian pear in our park and, yeah, I mean it could use a little prettying up, but in terms of air circulation it's perfect.
Speaker 1:so, yeah, that's what I would do for those three okay, so we're looking three to five years winter pruning and then summer pruning after that, once you have the formative shape in place.
Speaker 2:Exactly, unless you again are looking at let's say, there was a windstorm and you're looking at a tree and it lost a bunch of branches and you think we need some new scaffold branches to grow from the tree. Then you may want a winter prune because you want to spur vigorous growth. So once you know the science, you can adapt it to the tree yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1:I gotta take a step back. We spoke a lot about fungal diseases. Um, here in ireland it is all pretty much fungal diseases as well, and the one that causes the most problems and I'm sure it's the same for you guys is canker. Is that, I suppose, the most prominent disease or the most troublesome disease that you see?
Speaker 2:Canker we have, and often it's a symptom of different fungal diseases. Sometimes it can be bacterial as well, depending on what the tree is. Yes, so canker like. The amazing thing is, once you know how to prune correctly, how to remove a branch safely so that it heals properly. You can't just hack off branches. You have to leave the collar and you may have done a podcast on this but you have to cut just past this sort of. It looks like a little turtleneck around the base of any branch. You have to leave that little round circle protruding bit and then you cut it and then it can heal.
Speaker 2:So the important thing with canker is you need to remove it when you see it Not on a rainy day, but when it's a dry day. You go out, you see some canker on a branch. It can be oozing goop, it can look hard and crispy and black. And if you decide you want to remove the whole branch, you can do that. But if you just want to shorten the branch, make sure you cut a couple of inches before you see the canker and don't put the branch in your compost pile. Get it off the site, put it in a bag, because how do things spread the pathogen. Even if it's sitting beside the tree and the branch is no longer alive, that pathogen will just blow around. So canker you have to remove. As you see, if it's on the trunk of the tree and this has happened with us before on various trees if it's young tree you're probably going to have to throw out the whole tree. But if it's an older tree you can actually take a box cutter like a box cutting knife, put a sheet down around the bottom of the tree. Put a sheet down around the bottom of the tree and cut a circle around the infected area so that the circle only includes clean, like healthy tissue and you're scraping out all of the bark and the dead or sick tissue underneath it, scraping that out onto the sheet so it doesn't go into the soil and right down to the heartwood, to that hard part of the tree that would be like you know people would use to make things with right and so by carving that out. Then what I would do is take something like garden sulfur and spray some garden sulfur, some antifungal organic spray, in there and the trees can heal.
Speaker 2:The trees that have had canker that we've had to take down completely are those that have canker all over the place. It's in the trunk, it's out of every branch, it's already gone through the entire system of the tree and in that case, my friend, you have to take down the whole tree in order to protect the rest of your trees. Mm-hmm, you know. So we have to be detached. You know, we talked earlier about community orchard projects and people come to me and say, well, we want to dedicate a tree to people who pay for the tree. And I'm thinking, maybe don't do that. Can you imagine? You know the John Jones tree and it's sick all the time.
Speaker 2:You know it's sick all the time. And then finally it's like sorry, john, we got to cut down your tree. We'll plant another one in your name. And it's like, yeah, no, maybe not. So don't personalize them in that way though. We love our trees Like I'm so attached to them, but if I have to cut them down, I will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for the greater good of the rest of the trees makes sense. Yes, yeah, I planted some apple trees well, some apples, plums, pears a couple years ago and last, last year, one of the trees got canker in just too many places and it just had to go. And yeah, it's you prefer if it didn't, but that's just the way. In order to make sure the rest of them stayed healthy, it has to go yeah, exactly yeah, um, then, in terms of in terms of pests.
Speaker 1:So again, pruning is going to help in terms of pests. But, and to be fair, and I might just look at the kind of the most common examples here again, we have the apple moth and the plum moth, which you know, they're probably, again, the most troublesome things in terms of pests. Obviously we have some issues with birds as well. At at the stage where the fruit is is ripe, the birds are watching it just as eagerly as the, as the homeowner is, and if you don't get there on time you could find that they're gone overnight. But I think apple moth and plum moth are the two that cause the most problems here. Any kind of good tips around those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so here we call them, and I think it's the same insect, more or less, where we've got apple maggot and codling moth.
Speaker 1:Codling moth yeah.
Speaker 2:Codling moth. So we've got those two, and for plum, it's plum corculio.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, okay, apple mug and codling moth are somewhat easier to deal with in the sense that. Well, let me backtrack. I'm just trying to think. When you understand the life cycle of the insect, so when you understand where it lays its eggs, where it lives, does it live in the soil? Does it live in the bark?
Speaker 2:One thing we know about many pests is they hide over winter in the cracks and crevices of the tree and they lay their eggs there of the tree and they lay their eggs there. So the first thing that we try to always do is to give our trees a dormant oil spray. Here we use something called lime sulfur mixed with dormant oil. It's a kit. You buy lime sulfur and dormant oil, but everywhere you go you can get some sort of dormant oil and what you do is, before the buds open probably too late for you guys now it's about time for that here Before the buds open, when the temperature is slightly above freezing, you spray the tree with this oil and coat the tree. You put it in all the cracks and crevices, but you coat the entire tree and hopefully you're keeping your trees nice and compact. So you can do this and it smothers overwintering insects that are inside there. So that takes care of a whole bunch of insects. Now, sadly, I don't think apple maggot and codling moth are amongst them, but there'll be other ones that you'll get rid of in that, for apple maggot and codling moth need to know that these insects though the, the. They lay their eggs under the skin of the baby fruit. So you think your tree is perfect. They're out there laying their eggs and then you start to see oozing goop coming from your little apples on the tree and you're like, oh, that doesn't look good. Sure, doesn't look good, because as that fruit grows, the egg inside hatches and it turns into a maggot or a worm and it destroys your fruit. So one way you can stop that is if you see a fruitlet that is infected, that's oozing goop you pull it off. You don't put it in your compost, you put in a bag, you take it off the site, you put it in municipal garbage, whatever, okay, rubbish, get rid of it, okay.
Speaker 2:But it's even better to prevent that from happening in the first place, and a trick that I learned because we weren't allowed to do sprays is something called orchard socks. They're also called maggot barriers, john, I don't know if women do this, but if men do this too. But when you are trying on women's shoes, you go to the shoe store and if you're wearing like sandals, they're like ew, don't put your shoe, your foot, you're in the shoe. Here's a try on sock and it's a little nylon. You slip it on your, your foot and then you put your foot in the shoe just to keep everything a little clean. Um, so these orchard socks are essentially try on socks. You can even get them on amazon or whatever they're called try on socks.
Speaker 2:So what you do is you go out when the fruit is just about the size of like, uh, like an inch in diameter or something or less, and you slip these little sockets on the apple and tie up the top. So they're nylon, so they stretch. As the fruitlet grows, the nylon stretches and it prevents those insects from laying their eggs under the skin of the fruit. We have done that for 15 years. We've done experiments with it where because it takes time, you know we get the crew out we put on as many socks as we can on the fruitlets. The fruitlets that are covered 99% clean. The ones that aren't covered get the apple maggot or coddling moth problems. So it works, but it's time consuming, but it works and you can at least do some of your fruit like that.
Speaker 2:And then the final thing which we don't do, and I don't know if you guys have access to it there is a spray called kaolin clay. It is just clay, it's called surround in the States and you can spray your tree. You follow the instructions and it makes the fruit sort of scratchy so that when the insects land it's uncomfortable, they don't want to be there, and then they go and do something else. And the final tactic for those guys is traps. And the final tactic for those guys is traps, traps. You get a sticky trap and you get a coddling moth allure so it smells like certain hormones. It attracts the male insects who come to smell this nice smell of girls basically, and then they land in the trap which is like the shape of a diamond, and they get stuck and they die. So the women, the women, the girl insects are flying around with nobody to meet with, so they don't have eggs, so they don't have babies.
Speaker 2:And final tip Okay, I know that's a lot of tips, but the final tip is in the fall, when you've got fallen fruit around the tree and diseased leaves around the tree. Clean everything up meticulously, do not put it in the compost, Put it in a bag, get it off the site, put it in municipal rubbish, whatever and you're getting rid of the pathogens from next year. You're getting rid of the pathogens from next year. You're getting rid of the fungal spores. You're getting rid of any worms that are inside those apples that will just overwinter and come back full force next year even more, more and more. So. The more you ignore things, the worse they get from year to year. Things do not go away on their own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really good point for anyone listening, because disease here is definitely the, I suppose, the biggest struggle that people have when it comes to fruit trees. But what you've just talked about is exactly what you said at the start that it's important to view this as not necessarily difficult, but continuous care of the tree. Not necessarily difficult, but continuous care of the tree. And so every year you do a little bit. You know pruning husbandry in terms of cleaning up the area, taking away the fruit treatments and every year, by doing a little bit, your tree is getting stronger, your tree is getting more resilient as you go along, and while you'll always have to do a little bit, once you get that establishment right, it leads to successful fruiting for years to come. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:That's very well said. That is so very well said Because it doesn't have to be a full-time job. It's once you know what to do, you just do it Like again with the parent situation. I mean, I guess parents just get used to feeding their kids three times a day. They don't forget to feed their kids three times a day, right, they don't forget to put their kids to bed, or you know. And then the kids get older and they get more self-sufficient. Fruit trees also get more self-sufficient, as you were saying. They get healthier with this care, so that they are more resilient.
Speaker 2:I did a podcast my podcast a while back, an interview with an entomologist who has discovered that healthy trees are not of interest to fruit tree pests. So you asked about the plum corculio and that is a really, really tricky one. I can't give you as easy solutions for that one, but saying that the healthier your tree is, the less interesting it is for all of these pests. Again, with children in the playground, the big bully. The big bully doesn't pick on the strong kid that's self-confident, that you know doesn't have a problem. It's like what's wrong with you. The bully picks on the one that's a little weaker, a little insecure, not super confident, and it's in terms of fruit trees and other plants. What it is is.
Speaker 2:A healthy tree has a lot of sweetness in it, in the leaves and whatever. It's almost too sweet. So the insect they can't digest it. They like weak trees. The weak trees exude something that they know. This is the one to target. Trees exude something that they know. This is the one to target. So everything I teach in my you know online courses and in my books is about how to get, bring up your trees so that they're the strong, confident ones, so that they are resilient in the face of climate change, in the face of pests, in the face of diseases. Just like we need to be resilient in this world, you know, we want our trees to be resilient too.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant, because that is something that gets repeated, probably on a monthly basis on the podcast. You know, healthy plants in general, whether we're talking about roses, whether we're talking about vegetables, whether we're talking about fruit trees, healthy plants are 100%. You mentioned having an entonomous on who was able to show you specifically in relation to fruit trees, but it's true of all plants, of all, as I say, roses, vegetables, whatever the healthier the plant, the less susceptible they are to any disease or any pest. That's going so. That's. That's good that you've, you know, emphasized that and that there is some kind of proof there as well.
Speaker 2:There is proof, it's amazing. And his expertise. He was talking about fruit trees, but his expertise is all plants, I think all edible plants, and so people might want to listen to that podcast because he is brilliant. At some point I've written a whole bunch of books, but at some point I want to do a book on pests and diseases, and boy will I be featuring the science around that because it is fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we speak a lot about soil health. In relation to soil health, translating to a healthy plant, how do you see soil health, or what role do you see that soil health has in fruit trees? Because, again, it may seem to people fruit tree, it's up above the ground that there isn't a huge connection between the two. You know maybe less so than there is when you're growing your vegetables or whatever, but it is still key and what you know in terms of your garden, your fruit trees, what do you do to encourage soil health? Oh, first of all, I got to tell you, you know, in terms of your garden, your fruit trees, what do you do to encourage soil health?
Speaker 2:Oh, first of all, I got to tell you you know it sounds like I'm smart now or I knew nothing. You know, I really knew nothing when I started and I'm only smart because I interview smart people I'm not really smart, but when I was astonished when I first learned that people who grow orchards spend three years preparing the soil we had this park that was like, hey, let's plant some fruit trees there. I hadn't even dug a hole to see what the quality of the soil looked like. I was like sure we can plant fruit trees here. And it's terrible. Really compact soil, right. But what professional growers will do is they decide where they find the site. It's got to be full sun. They will test the soil to see the quality of the soil. They will plant cover crops repeatedly and add organic matter and then till it in, and they do this for three years and then they plant their trees.
Speaker 2:Now saying that most homeowners aren't going to do that, and rightly so. Hopefully their gardens are okay. But even if you can amend the soil six months before you can plant the tree, or a year or whatever, just start thinking about where that tree is going to go just like you would be preparing the bedroom for the newborn baby, you know, painting the walls or doing whatever you know, having a baby carriage or whatever you do. So preparing the soil in advance, even if the minimum I would do now is, if you want you've said, susan, I want to plant an apple tree in my backyard I'd say, okay, first thing, before you buy the tree, go, dig a hole in the area that you plant your tree. Is there 12 inches of good quality soil, well-drained, nice soil? If it looks a little bit too heavy, add some compost, give it some time. Maybe do a little cover crop of clover or something. Let's just get it a little bit ready for the fruit tree.
Speaker 2:The next thing I would say is, every year in the spring, say is every year in the spring, I do it before, if possible, before the tree leaves out, put down a layer of compost, two inches of compost, around the roots of the tree, knowing that the feeder roots of the tree the little, tiny, little fresh roots they're the ones that take in water and nutrition. They're going to be at the outer edge of the canopy, not really close to the trunk, so mulching just two inches around the trunk is not going to do the trick. You want to have a beautiful big mulch circle, always extending it so that it goes towards the edge of the canopy. And people are like, what Are you kidding? And I'm absolutely not kidding, that's what I do. I keep it all clean up until the edge of the canopy if possible. So every spring you give the tree compost.
Speaker 2:Here's why I told you that in the winter the tree has energy in its root system. Once that energy is used up, it needs new energy. So if you put compost around those roots, it will start to break down. By that root energy is burnt up and it will feed the tree and then the tree will have leaves and it will feed itself important with compost. And if you want, you can put wood chips on top of that. Wood chips break down slower. So I would always put two inches of compost first or one inch of rotted or composted manure. That's another option.
Speaker 2:So those are the main soil health things that I can tell you about. In my book Grow Fruit Trees Fast, I talk about how you can use holistic sprays just diluted molasses, essentially to feed your tree and how that feeds the soil. It's a little bit of a scientific thing which I think probably your listeners are getting a little tired of science. But there's so many things you can do to help the soil, but I think I gave you some of the basic ones, yeah yeah, and it's something we talk a lot about on the podcast anyway.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure that they, you know they, they get the gist of it. Um, but it is, it is true that healthy, healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy plant, less disease, so it's it's all connected and it's important to be aware of that before we we chat about your podcast, your book and your youtube channel. I have a question. Uh, it's a question from my own garden. I was gifted a family plum tree, so it has three different varieties on it and I'm sure you don't love these, but I was gifted it. So tell me, how would I go about pruning that? Because obviously I knew you were going to say that Obviously, there's the pruning that we would have for a plum tree, which is one plum tree on one rootstock, but this is three plum trees on one rootstock. Any recommendations? I've looked at it the last little while and I'm struggling to get my head around how I'm actually going to prune this tree.
Speaker 2:And it's such a challenge. Like I learned to graft later and I loved grafting and I love multi fruit trees. If you create them yourself, like I love the idea of having a backyard tree like, let's say, a backyard apple tree and, once it's a little bit mature, grafting on new branches. And when you graft on those new branches with different types of fruit, you can have an apple tree that has apples that ripen in late August, apples that ripen in September, apples that ripen in October. You can have loads of different types of apples on one mature tree. What you would do in that case is you would use paint to signify which are your grafted branches so you don't accidentally cut them off when you're pruning. You need to know which are your important branches. Not a bad idea to do it with your young multi-plum tree as well, because as it gets older it's going to have more branches. You need to know which are your main branches.
Speaker 2:The problem with those that, the problem here is that somebody has created the structure for you that you can't change, because so I would look at a multifruit tree and the one question I would ask is how can I improve air circulation without removing any of those branches. Those branches have to stay. So if you see sprouts coming from the trunk, you know I'd mentioned to you that with central leader you want clean trunk in between your platforms. You want two feet of clean trunk so you can rub off sprouts as they pop up, or snip them off if they're already branches. You can. If you find one of your main fruiting branches is getting a bit heavy, you would still take off water sprouts.
Speaker 2:Upward branches, you know ones that don't produce fruit. You can head it back so you can shorten the branch to thicken it up a bit, to make it stronger, because that branch has to stay right. So there are certain things that you can do. What you can't do is sculpt the perfect fruit bearing structure because it's already given you the structure. But you certainly can keep it. You know good clean air circulation as best you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure, because, as I say, I've looked at it on numerous days and I'm struggling to figure out what we have to go at it, but, yeah, it has to be done soon anyway. So, yeah, so we mentioned books. You've mentioned a couple of them as we chatted there. So you've written is it four books on fruit trees? So tell us about those, just the names of them, and are they all still in publication? And so on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. My first one is called Growing Urban Orchards and that talks about my experience starting a community orchard and I said to you that tells you the minimum you need to know in order to grow fruit trees successfully. I've got one just here beside me, I've got Grow Fruit Trees Fast and I like that book because, again, this goes into more depth but you can read it in an hour. So if you're thinking of planting a fruit tree, get this, read it first so you know what you need to do. And if you have a fruit tree that you're baffled by, get this. Read this so you know what you need to do. So that's a quick read for busy people, but you'll read it from front to back. You know in an hour and you'll know what to do. The third book is Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone how to cultivate or how to create your own fruit trees. I can't remember the subtitle and that was teaching me how to do grafting and demystifying it and making it fun, which it is, and then my. You know I'm so excited. The new book is called Fruit Tree Pruning the Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees and it talks about everything we've talked about in the show, plus a lot more about the science of pruning. My goal there is to empower you. Whatever tree you have, after reading that book, you'll know how to take care of it and prune it.
Speaker 2:So, in addition to that, I have my podcast and it's on any podcatcher and it's called Orchard People and, like I said, I interviewed these amazing experts. This is my continuing education. I get to find any expert that I'm interested in learning from and I get to find out and learn from them. And if you guys want to come on a ride and enjoy it with me, then please tune into that. And then, finally, if people are interested in my online courses, you can find them at orchardpeoplecom.
Speaker 2:And homeowners take them. Anybody who wants to master gardeners take them. Arborists take them. You can even get continuing education credits for arborists and professional gardeners. So, yeah, I've got lots of resources and I've got articles and all sorts of stuff. And finally, oh my goodness, the YouTube channel is a lot of fun. A few years ago, I started to do all my podcasts in video format because they're so interesting, these people that I'm interviewing and I cut in, we edit in pictures to bring it all to life. It's not just two people talking, so those are a lot of fun too. So it's the Orchard People YouTube channel.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's been really interesting chat. There's so much there, lots of very good information, deep information, but also very understandable information. So thank you very, very much for coming on. Mastermind Garden Podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, John, for having me. You are really fun to chat with.
Speaker 1:So that's been this week's episode. Huge thanks to Susan for coming on. That was really. Yes, there's some very good stuff there. Like we've said it before, healthy plants equals less disease, and that's really important, and I think Susan reinforced that there. And there's great information around the pruning. So, again, here in Ireland a lot of us think of pruning as just trying to keep something in shape, but you look at it from a different angle, an angle of, you know, creating a healthier plant, and that's really where you're coming at it from. So it's not from the point of view of keeping it in check or keeping it in shape. It's about creating a healthy tree that will produce for you for years and years to come. So, yeah, loads of great information there. You can check out Susan's podcast, her YouTube channel, her books and all of the other resources, online courses and so on. I'll put the link in the show notes for anyone that wants to check any of those out. And that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.