SAGINAW, MI -- These warmer days in February make me start thinking about this year's garden.

The great thing about right now is you get to do the first gardening of the year. You should be pruning your apple trees and other fruit trees in the month of February.

Why do we cut off perfectly good wood? There are two reasons.

The first is to eliminate "sucker" wood that just takes away energy from the apple producing part of the tree. The second is to reduce the amount of apples to a healthy amount for the tree.

In fruit growing, quality is more important than quantity. Would you rather eat 25 nice apples or 100 ugly, small, diseased apples?  I thought so.

So grab the hand pruning shears, the long handled pruning shears and a small pruning saw.  Make sure they are sharp and that you have washed them with bleach to get any diseases off of them. I've never done that. But, if you are a germaphobe, you might as well raise your trees that way.

Start with any suckers that are growing out of the ground near the base of the tree. These do nothing but take energy that would have gone to building a bigger apple. Try to go easy on the pruners in the dirt. Cut as low as you can, but bear in mind that soil dulls pruners fast.

I'm showing one of my honeycrisp trees that should start to bear this year, especially now that the suckers are removed.

The second step isn't too bad either. Remove branches that are called watersprouts. These are a thinner straight branch that usually grows straight up from the inner part of a main branch. They will just not look right. Get those out of there.

Now it starts to get tougher on deciding what branches to remove. Just remember, Rome wasn't built in a day and you can come back next week if a branch sticks out as not quite right.

The goal now is to remove one quarter to one third of the branches to make the remaining branches bear nice, big apples. You also want to end up with a tree where sun and air can get into the center of the tree. Remove any branches that grow into the middle of the tree or any branches that cross and rub other limbs. You're almost there.

Remove a few more branches that seem too close together. When I prune a branch back, I leave an outer bud that will grow the branch in the direction I want. This technique helps you balance out a tree over a few years. You're done.

We may prune a little more after the tree leafs out and blossoms. The tree will also naturally prune too many apples in what's called "June drop."  Sometime in June you'll think something is wrong with the tree, but it's just its way of getting the right amount of apples on the tree.

A piece of advice from Uncle Mark on planting more fruit trees. I grow only dwarf trees. They are so much fun, and much easier to care for than the semi-dwarf or standard-sized fruit trees.  It's true they don't bear as many fruits, but the quality can be real nice since you can get the sprays all around them. The small size also allows you to grow organically, which I highly recommend.

If you want a chemical-laden piece of fruit, you can buy that.  If you want a clean, healthy piece of fruit, grow it yourself.

Coming up, I'll recommend varieties that are resistant to some typical fruit diseases. This allows you to at least eliminate the fungicide part of the chemical treatments.