Open Center and pre-fall maintenance

[bigboreblr]

Anybody prune trees to open center? I have a kieffer, bartlet, and gin pear. The gin pear is 97x rootstock and the other are semi-dwarf. I got a saturn peach too. Thinking some of them can be open center. The kieffer has 3 leaders, but angles aren't good.

I am swapping out some 10ft sections of 4ft cage to 6ft tall cages. Besides lazy, I have been putting them off because I was considering chopping them down to 5ft. Got a good facebook deals on ends of fencing rolls, most were 6ft. Weeds wree getting tlall, so I hit them with gly. Swapped out a cage or two and gave the little guys the 4ft ones for this winter.

Anything you guys do late august / september. Another incesticide spraying? Skipped july because of all the rain. I have cycadas in my trees, not sure if they good or bad for them. They eat the tree or the insects in it. 3 noticable insects were aphids, ants, and japanese beetles. Saw a vole hole or two wandering around them yesterday.

 

[chickenlittle]

My pears want to grow vertical. I think it’d be hard to prune and keep them open.

 

[SwampCat]

I would prune the peach to open center. Imperative in the south for good air flow to dry the morning dew on the peach

 

[b116757]

Most of my older trees were pruned to an open center and in my experience some verities lend themselves to that pruning technique better than others. Moving forward I’m trying to prune to a central leader on my young trees.