A healthy and productive orchard is a pride and joy for the owner. Go to the tree, pick a warm Apple, treat the child: eat it, it’s already ripe! Not working? Oh, Yes, the ladder must be set up: you can’t get the apples. How much better it would be if the fruit were conveniently located at eye level or even lower! Today we will tell you how to make fruit-bearing trees comfortable without reducing productivity.
What is a convenient tree?
It’s simple. The convenient tree is low and small enough that you don’t have to fall off high ladders when harvesting. Its crown should be open-bushy or Cup-shaped. And here is luck — just in this case, apples, pears, peaches, cherries and plums bear fruit in the most active way.
There are a lot of advantages here at once.
- Forming is quite simple. It is enough to shorten the leader, bend branches and cut vertical shoots.
- Convenience: almost all branches can be reached by hand. Working with wood, especially harvesting, is much easier and safer.
- It hurts less. In other words, it is more eco-friendly (both the environment and fruit are significantly healthier). But if necessary, it is easy to handle with a manual sprayer, using a minimum of drugs.
- Early begins to bear fruit, usually from the third year. The fruits are large, full-bodied, as the crown allows you to regulate the load of the crop.
- Does not shade neighboring plants — plant more vegetables and flowers nearby. You can place up to a dozen of these trees on one hundred acres without compromising their condition. And they do not create problems with the crop — there is no surplus, and it is pleasant to collect.
- Finally, such trees are beautiful!
And the disadvantages? There is one-such trees themselves do not become. They should be engaged in every spring, and it is better to do it again in the summer. Basically, you have to remove constantly growing up shoots. In other words, trees need to be understood and communicated with.
Correct fruit branch
As a branch, so is the fruit! To make a normal tree, it is enough to learn how to create and then maintain a normal skeletal branch. Here I mean the main branches that make up the crown. And the small branches that bear fruit, which they grow along, we will call fruit branches.
A normal branch has four qualities.
- It is strongly inclined or even horizontal, and its increments are raised.
- It is illuminated by the direct sun for at least half a day.
- Along its entire length, every 10-20 cm, there are working fruit branches.
- It is accessible to the hands without any stairs.
By default: a normal branch (like a tree!) the bark is intact, the leaves are not eaten or diseased, that is, the tree is healthy and viable. There is a normal branch and its optimal state — its annual growth has an average strength of 40 to 70 cm. A normal tree consists, of course, only of normal branches. Well, that’s what it wants to do, anyway.
Exceptions are particularly valuable trees that are forgiven for repeatedly exceeding human height: apricots, walnuts, free-growing cherries.
What to do with exceptions
Apricots can be made small only in one way — to graft on a special dwarf rootstock. But these are still in short supply, and apricots add 2 m per year. And believe me, no shortening or bending here will not do anything, they will win you. It is more realistic to cut the crown down to the shoulders once every 3-4 years — for complete rejuvenation.
Walnuts can be shortened a couple of times in youth — branch; but then it is better to leave freely and remove only the sick and interfering branches. In the end, their yield is proportional to the volume. And the more shade in summer, the better. Of course, they should not be planted anywhere in the garden, but somewhere to the South of the gazebo.
Cherries are traditionally grafted on seedlings and grow tall. For delicious berries they are forgiven and this, but you need to plant trees at the Northern fences. Still, they can be formed with a Bush. Then harvest is a pleasure: the wood of the cherry is flexible, the branches bend easily. But it doesn’t work with other trees.
It is very tempting to have in your garden not just strong productive fruit trees, but also convenient, easy and pleasant to work with.
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