Thursday, March 10, 2011

Late Winter Pruning




One of our goals this season is to prune all the fruit trees at our orchard. We have never been able to do this is the past and it will take us about three seasons of pruning all the trees each season to get the trees back into proper form. Our primary goal is to prune for air circulation anticipating that this will help with some of the problems we have with fruit quality since we began our organic practices.


The image is an easy puzzle that took me way too long to figure out. Some of the trees near the wood line have chewing damage. The damage looks like a pruning cut at 45 degrees; the 45 degree clue usually means rabbits. But the damage was as high as my chest, which didn't make sense. Of course the reason the damage was so high was because for much of the winter we had 2 feet of snow with 3 foot drifts. I'd like to say I realized this in a matter of seconds but minutes are more honest.

Even with the damage it's great to have rabbits on the property after their disappearance for so many years in the 1990s.