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torquillI pruned the cherry tree at the Pittsburg house yesterday. It had clearly been neglected for about 20 years; the base of it is half-rotten, with one thigh-sized trunk coming off that produces (what must be) Bing cherries, and the other side a tangle of thick branches that I finally figured out are Mahaleb rootstock (it doesn't produce fruit of any kind). The Bing had lots of dead branches and no real structure, though it seems healthy enough.
Cherries are, at least technically, supposed to have a central leader structure like apples and pears, though I've never understood exactly why (peaches and apricots use a vase structure, and plums can go either way). I've certainly seen vase-shaped cherry trees in orchards. So I compromised, left about three central leaders, chopped out everything in the middle, and encouraged a bit of scaffold growth. I took off some big limbs, and ended up with what looked like 2-3 trees worth of discarded wood. Renovation pruning always feels pretty savage. Fine tuning will happen in the next two years.
I left some of the Mahaleb for grafting (I picked up scions last month), but I whacked off a large trunk in the hope of shocking it into making some waterspouts I can use for better grafting stock. I'll try my luck this year on the smaller "trunks" I left behind, and see how well the buds take; if they take well, I'll have enough grafting wood in two or three years to move them to better locations if needs be, without having to ask for more scion wood from elsewhere.
It's already got Bing, and I picked up Black Tartarian (best early cherry EVAR), Lapin, and an unnamed pie cherry. With luck, in a few years, I'll have a decent 4-variety tree out there. :)
Cherries are, at least technically, supposed to have a central leader structure like apples and pears, though I've never understood exactly why (peaches and apricots use a vase structure, and plums can go either way). I've certainly seen vase-shaped cherry trees in orchards. So I compromised, left about three central leaders, chopped out everything in the middle, and encouraged a bit of scaffold growth. I took off some big limbs, and ended up with what looked like 2-3 trees worth of discarded wood. Renovation pruning always feels pretty savage. Fine tuning will happen in the next two years.
I left some of the Mahaleb for grafting (I picked up scions last month), but I whacked off a large trunk in the hope of shocking it into making some waterspouts I can use for better grafting stock. I'll try my luck this year on the smaller "trunks" I left behind, and see how well the buds take; if they take well, I'll have enough grafting wood in two or three years to move them to better locations if needs be, without having to ask for more scion wood from elsewhere.
It's already got Bing, and I picked up Black Tartarian (best early cherry EVAR), Lapin, and an unnamed pie cherry. With luck, in a few years, I'll have a decent 4-variety tree out there. :)
