Recent content by David M. Taylor

Never too late. Get there when you can. Better to prune anytime, than no time.

Update: After all the above discussion, I ended up getting a peach tree on somewhat of a whim. Elberta peach. It will be located in the most sunny part of the yard, almost full sun. I had planned to put a Cortland there to replace my Cortland that died last year of fireblight, but the...

Decision time. You already have the perfect framework for an open-center / vase-shaped tree. You don't necessarily need to have a central leader, just because that's the happenin' trend right now. But if central leader style is what you want, then you need to remove those two gigantically...

They look pretty good in my opinion. You might want to keep the lowest branches 3-4 feet off the ground, but if you're at 2.5 feet or so, I don't think it's necessarily wrong either, and limbs can always be removed years down the road if/when no longer needed. Not much pruning or training...

Those Cortland trees are gorgeous! Cortland is my favorite apple and I am planting one this spring for the second time -- my previous one died of fireblight. Since I know Cortland is a tip bearing tree with no real spurs to speak of, I would be very interested to learn more from you or others...

Thanks WTNUT, and all of you. I have decided that it's not worth the trouble to try a nectarine or peach here. I will wait for global warming then plant one about 20-30 years from now. ;D Cheers all!

Looks very good. Keep up the good work. One small comment, just in case: Make sure you don't remove fruit spurs. It's very hard from these pictures to see if you have any spurs developing on there. These will be short stubby "branches" only about 1 inch long, where the flowers and fruit will...

Espalier style, eh? Hmm... I'll have to see if I can find a good spot for it. I believe that answer is no but I'll give it a little thought.

I got about a full bushel of Honeycrisp last year, ENORMOUS first-crop. I even removed half the buds and thinned to one fruit per cluster. The apples were huge too. Unfortunately, about 95% had apple maggot. But the ones that were clean were simply WONDERFUL. I'll be sure to spray this year...

Thank you, Kent. I've watched most of your videos. I didn't know you had tried growing peaches in Michigan. Again this is confirming my worries... probably not worthwhile for me to try a nectarine here where I'll bet it's even colder and shadier.

Thank you, that is helpful and is consistent with what I've been concerned about. I'm still curious as to people's real-life experience though, as I know Google and written texts will often provide the safest answer, but is all this conservative guidance truly consistent with reality? Overall...

Hello, I guess I'm "the new guy" around here, but I've been a mini-urban orchardist for about 10 years now, and I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours reading about fruit, and pruning, and the best varieties to grow, etc. I have tasted more than 100 heritage varieties of apples and I...