Your Small Kitchen Garden

My small kitchen garden is coming out of dormancy a few weeks too early for my taste. I usually prune my fruit trees through March, and graft from one tree onto another throughout the month. With temperatures in the first week of March going over 60 degrees Fahrenheit, I’m concerned the buds on my fruit trees will plump up, and I’ll run out of time.

At Least Prune in Your Small Kitchen Garden

Pruning is critical to the long-term health and manageability of your fruit trees, so get it done before the sap runs. By pruning while the tree is dormant, you give the exposed green wood a chance to dry out before sap is moving through it. Just a few days’ drying is enough to seal a wound and keep it from leaking sap that could attract insects and nurture molds and microorganisms.

My past three posts have been about pruning, and I’m putting together a post about grafting. While working on these, I found a most curious growth in one of my apple trees and thought I’d share it.

A branch emerges from the trunk near the bottom-left of the photo and runs diagonally up and right. Where it crosses another branch, the two have grown together. Grafting exploits this natural malleability, letting you easily attach branches from one tree to another where they bond to their new home.

Apparently, two seasons ago a young branch rested in the crotch of a second young branch. Even though I had attempted some grafts on the same trunk, I hadn’t noticed this crossing of existing branches; in my series on pruning, I encourage you to eliminate such crossings to prevent damage to bark and competition for light.

As you can see in the photo, the two branches have grown together. I have no use for either branch—this is a tree that, through grafting, I’m converting from a green apple tree into a red apple tree (I’ll explain in my next post). Both branches are green apple tree stock. Because of their novelty, I may leave them, though I’d rather all the tree’s energy went into producing red apples.

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