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A couple of years ago, we won a gift certificate to the local nursery. I ended up adding $40 to the kitty and we walked away with 2 apple trees. I wrote about planting the fruit trees, explaining how we put them in the ground.
Fast forward to last year and our two trees provided wonderful meals for a deer. It (or they) pruned those fruit trees to within an inch of their lives.
As a matter of fact, this year, one of the trees only grew leaves – zero flowers, zero fruit. Obviously it was just trying to survive.
The other tree however, seemed to really enjoy the deer pruning! Here’s the result – we have lots of apples on this small tree. I did thin quite a few of them offf the tree as I was concerned that the branches might break.
Our trees bear four different kinds of apples, or I should say they were supposed to bear four different kinds. Looking closely at this tree, it seems that they are all only one variety and that was the “main” tree that the other kinds were grafted onto.
So, we’ve been enjoying sharing a Battleford apple each day. Hopefully next year, the harvest is even bigger and who knows? We might even get a few apples off of the other tree.
Soon, we will be making wire cages to surround both the trees. We will make them tall and wide enough that the deer can’t reach the trees.
Fall is a great time to plant a few fruit trees, so think about adding a few trees to your homestead shopping list!
Here’s how you can prune an apple tree – or any fruit tree.