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Larry Sagers Horticultural Specialist Utah State University Extension Service Thanksgiving Point Office © All Rights Reserved
Home Fruit Production Class with Larry Sagers Call 768-7443 to register or go to www.thanksgivingpoint.com
February 1,8,15, and March 1 2-4 pm or 6-8 pm.
Thinking of growing fruit trees, have questions as to which variety are the best for Utah or do you have fruit trees that are not producing the way you would like? Come learn how to succeed with your backyard orchard.
Topics include soil, fertilizing, variety selection, pollination, planting and pest control.(4 week class meeting every week for 2 hours)
How Fruit Trees Bear
Most gardeners do not understand how fruit trees bear fruit. The fruit buds determine the fruit crop. A critical part of the pruning is stimulating abundant flower production. In the home orchard there are two basic types of flowers. Pome fruits include the apples, pears and quinces. These trees produce clusters of flower buds on the terminal ends of specialized fruiting stems call spurs. The twisted spurs make interesting shapes and produce fruit for many years. Some varieties also produce on lateral buds.
Stone fruits bear fruit on wood that grew the previous year. Peaches bear fruit on lateral buds, never on terminal buds. Apricot trees bear on one year old wood but their main production comes on lateral spurs. Plums and prunes produce their fruit in much the same way. The spurs on the plum and cherry bear their flower buds laterally and the terminal bud is generally a leaf bud.
Sweet cherry produce fruit on lateral buds never on the terminal buds. Although they produce on the shoots, they also produce fruit on spur-like growths. Pie cherry trees produce their fruit on lateral buds. These bear mostly on shoots and have fewer spurs than sweet cherry.
Understanding the differences in fruiting habits is essential to determine tree management. Pome fruits produce on wood that is at least two years old. The spurs live for years and produce fruit for as long as twenty years.
They never produce fruit on one-year-old vegetative shoots called watersprouts. These sprouts shade the fruiting spurs and further interfere with the production of good, high quality fruit. Unfortunately, most of these trees have an overabundance of these non-fruiting shoots.
When pruning apple, preserve the spurs and eliminate the watersprouts. Heavy, misdirected pruning stimulates the growth of the one-year old sprouts that have no flower buds. Without the flower buds there is no fruit. Pome fruits are not pruned as heavily because the spurs continue to produce fruit for many years.
Peaches bear on one year wood. Peaches are pruned heavily to force new wood that will then produce more fruit. They require constant renewal to keep adequate prime fruit-producing wood.
Prune apricots, plums, prunes and sweet and pie cherries less than peaches but more than apples. Too much pruning on these trees makes them produce too many sprouts that produce no fruit.
Many USU extension service offices conduct pruning demonstrations each spring. For the listing of your county office log onto http://extension.usu.edu/ These offices also have a booklet, Pruning the Home Orchard. You can also view or download the publication from the same website.
