Apple Tree Pruning Workshop

Nigel Manly demonstrates a pruning cut at Welch Family Farm & Forest

Did you know that apples are not actually native to New England, or even the United States?  Aside from some varieties of crabappble, which are native to the U.S., the many varieties of "wild apple" that you can find growing in New Hampshire's woods are all trees or descendants of trees originally brought to North America by European settlers.  Often when you find apple trees in the woods in NH, there is an old cellar hole or other evidence of a long-abandoned homestead nearby.  Despite the fact that they are exotic, wild apple trees are an important year-round food source for many wildlife species including deer, bear, turkey, porcupine, moose, and a variety of rodents and birds.  It is for this reason that we advocate "releasing" and pruning wild apples where they exist on Forest Society properties, to improve their fruit production for wildlife.

Land Stewards Walter Weeks (Dickenson Forest) and Hiel Lindquist (Gap Mountain) try their hand at pruning a gnarly old apple tree

Nigel Manly, Director of the Forest Society's Rocks Estate in Bethlehem, NH, recently led a workshop for land stewards and other interested individuals on how to release and prune wild apple trees.  "Releasing" a wild apple simply means removing any competing vegetation or trees that have grown up around the tree and are shading it out.  The workshop was sponsored jointly by SPNHF and the Harris Center for Conservation Education (HCCE), and it included a field practice session at the Forest Society's Welch Family Farm and Forest in Hancock.  Nigel covered the basics of apple pruning with the group of about 30 participants, including essential tools, timing of pruning, making proper pruning cuts, reducing tree height, choosing what and how much to cut, liming and fertlizing, and reducing the spread of apple diseases like fire blight.  Six land stewards and three prospective land stewards attended the class, and I know many of them are excited to try out their newfound knowledge on the reservations they monitor for SPNHF.  In fact, two of them (Jason Morris and Scott Lavoice at Moose Mountains) have already begun... see their recent post about pruning some of the many old apples near the old Burrows Farm site HERE.  As everyone at the workshop learned on Saturday: Every apple tree is different, and there's not one "correct" way to tackle pruning one - pruning wild apples is more art than science!