It’s been a long, snowy winter and I’m sure you want to get out in the yard.
We still have a few hard freezes on the way, so planting would be rushing it. There is a task that can be done now, and I find it rewarding after it’s all done. So let’s get pruning our crabapple trees. Crabapple trees should really be pruned in winter or early March, but this year was too cold and snowy. So we’ll do it now. It’s a four step process. If you take each step one at a time the task isn’t that overwhelming.
Here are the four steps:
1) Remove the suckers at the base of the tree.
2) Saw off or prune off any dead branches.
3) Remove what are called “water sprouts.”
4) Step back and find branches that just don’t look right. Remove these and enjoy for a year.
Let’s go through the steps. Remove the suckers. These are “branches” that grow right out of the ground near the trunk of the tree. These suckers zap a lot of energy from the tree. So removing these will really help the tree bloom nicely, and set a lot of fruit. Although you don’t eat crabapples, the birds and other wildlife love them. Watch out when cutting these suckers off. Hitting the soil with your pruners is a sure way to dull them quickly.
Next there will be branches that are real thin, real straight, and grow straight up from a main branch in the center of the tree. These are called water sprouts. Why? I have no idea, but get rid of them. They grow into the center of the tree and really ruin the outline of the tree. They serve no purpose.
The first two steps are the easy steps. You know the suckers and water sprouts just don’t belong. This next step is a little harder. You have to step back and look! Imagine that limb gone and how the tree will look over the next few years without it. What will the limbs in that area look like? Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your tree doesn’t have to be pruned in a day. In fact, sometimes I’m sitting on our patio looking at a tree, and it hits me. That branch needs to go! So I quick grab my pruners and cut it off. If a tree has been neglected for a few years, it may take a couple of years to get it back to where it looks nice.
Now here’s the rewarding part. A neighbor or family member will come over to your place, and maybe relax and have a beer with you. They’ll say,”wow, your yard looks great. What did you do?” They won’t have a clue why the yard looks good, but it does. You’ll know why.
