Nice photo Kendra. Your 1st picture looks like the beginnings of South West injury. To stop this from getting worse paint your tree with a flat white interior latex paint in a 50/50 water to paint ratio. Heres a link if you have any questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qJtVd2k_lI With so many trees I would go to a big box store. Tell them what you are doing. Ask them to put a half gallon of interior white flat latex paint in a one gallon bucket. When you get home fill it the rest of the way with water and shake it up and you are ready to go. Most of your trees look like someone had tried to prune them into a Delayed Open Center form which is fine. However the work on some of them was never completed or they were left to do their own thing and the trees have been neglected for along time. There certainly is a lot of pruning that needs to be done. There is also more than one way to go about it depending on what form you ultimately want the trees to take. Here is a link that may be helpful but is not directed at older neglected trees. It will however give you some ideas that may be helpful and has good descriptions of each tree form. http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag29.html I see lots of advice and people trying to tell you what you should do. I dont think we are that point yet. There are at least three basic tree forms you should be considering. Each with its own advantages and disadvantages. They all have their merits and only you can decide which one is right for you and your family. A few things to keep in mind.. You do not have to prune them all the same form. Even if you decide to train them all to the same form you do not need to do them all at once. Apples are usually trained to one of three forms. They are "Central Leader" "Open Center" and sometimes "Delayed Open Center" You should read the descriptions from the link I provided above as I will not be describing them in any detail here. Instead I will give my personal take on what I think are important to the home orchardist and your trees in particular. Central Leader Trees trained to this form are tall Christmas tree shaped trees. They have good fruit production. The disadvantage is that they are tall which makes spraying, picking and pruning harder as you will need ladders and long reach pickers. The trees that look like they were left to their own designs from the start may be a good candidate for this form. Not that you cannot train these trees to either of the other two forms but this may be the easiest and quickest form to achieve with these trees. To do this you would start by cutting any dead or diseased wood then move on the crossing branches that rub. After this cut any branches with bad crotch angles then cut any wood that is growing toward the center of the tree. The next step would be to thin out the branches to let in light and air. You dont want to have scaffold branches all attached at the same pint on the trunk. If you can have them spaced vertically on the trunk 6" or more apart and branching off in different directions. Open Center/Vase Trees trained to this form have less production than the other two forms. However this form has other advantages. They are much shorter which makes them easy to prune, easy to pick and easy to spray and easy to inspect for diseases and infestations. I see none of your trees pruned to this form. If you were going to change to this form you would have to severely top your trees and you would not get any fruit the first season. With trees the size you have there would be some debate whether you should top them in one radical cut or over two seasons. If you chose this form and the trees are still dormant I think I would go with the more radical approach on the smaller trees. On the larger trees I would cut off all the small twigs and cut the current scaffold branches back severely to like 2-3 out from the trunk. The following year I would cut the trunk at 24"-30" from the ground. If it were me I would do this with the smaller trees in one cut while still dormant. If you chose to do that there is nothing wrong with doing only 1-5 trees the 1st year. That way you can see the results and how the trees respond and learn the pruning steps and how they shape the trees before doing more of them in proceeding years. Delayed Open Center The majority of your trees are trained to this form and you may wish to keep this form. If it were me I would keep this form on all the larger trees that are currently in this form. They still need a lot of pruning though. Start by cutting all the dead wood then move on to cutting the crossing branches that are rubbing against other branches or that may rub when it gets windy. Always preferring the larger healthier branches so long as they are not 50% or larger than 50% of the trunks diameter where they are attached. Then move onto cutting water sprouts and any wood growing toward the center of the tree. After this cut any branches that will shade out other branches preferring the branches that have better crotch angles. Then cut out any small branches or wood that is necessary to allow for good air flow and light penetration and you are done. Remember if you have to cut something because of a bad crotch angle or because its shading out a lower branch or because its diseased it does not mean new branches will not grow to replace them. This is the beauty of pruning. The pruning you do will spur more growth and more branches will grow. Cutting out a bad one will often cause many more to grow and you can then cut off the ones with bad crotch angles or that will rub or shade other branches and keep the best new ones next pruning season. Its all a learning experience and you will get better and faster at it as years go by. Most of the good videos are on Open Center pruning but there are others. If you would like I will post some of the better pruning videos I have found if you think you will have time to view them.

I agree that a serious fruit gardener has enough to contend with without handicapping themselves by having chemical war waged against their trees in the soil. Also I believe that it is more than simply poisoning- established black walnuts are extremely competitive as their roots are extremely prolific in areas where they grow. I have recently established an orchard in the vicinity of these trees and the density of black roots in the area is remarkable. I have the area around each individual tree spaded with a King of Spades type solid steel, long handled shovel just as BW's show signs of growth. So far so good, but I'm sure the roots will eventually go under depth of spade work. As usual, it is the peaches that have been most sluggish- they tend not to compete well against established trees when transplanted. I've often thought that some kind of heavy fabric or copper screen set in the planting hole might be affective if it was part of the original installation.

Again, thank you everyone for all the prayers and positive thoughts. Yesterday we spent the day salvaging as much as possible. Lots of photos, my mom seems to have a gazillion, and we're not throwing out any. All the furniture has been trashed as well as the carpeting. We'll try and save the washer and dryer but the other appliances are all gone. The beds, couches, tv's, small kitchen appliances, just too much to remember everything although we are trying to keep inventory. Today was spent pulling out the last of the carpets, sweeping mud out of all the rooms, washing most of the stuff in the kitchen and doing a million loads of laundry at the laundromat. We've got some contractors in who will work through the night to pull out dry wall up to a foot above the water line which was at about 4 feet. They'll be removing all the insulation from the walls as well. Cleanup has been reasonable easy because we were lucky enough to have a lot of help from the local South African and Jewish communities as well as from total strangers. I can't thank enough the people who are helping total strangers, the 10 yr old who gave lunch (an apple, bag of chips, sandwich and homemade cookie) to anyone who wanted one and she had about 100 sandwiches she'd made, the adults who walked up to you and asked what they could do to help or the elderly couple handing out ice water from their grandchild's wagon. My mom's car has been officially written off and it's covered by insurance which is a good thing because almost no-one here, including my family, has flood insurance. FEMA is coming in tomorrow to do an assessment. Laurie, thanks for the links. Thanks to all of you I think we got in early on that one. We're staying with friends n Horseshoe bend which is upriver a bit. Here's a link to see the floods both in Horseshoe bend and River Plantation: http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/category.asp?C=125220&clipId=4751432&flvUri=&partnerclipid=&topVideoCatNo=0amp;autoStart=true&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv When you see River Plantation, look how high the water came up, almost to the carport roofs. The lower houses in Horseshoe bend were almost half way up the first floor. There are dumpsters everywhere in HSB and driving down Sawyer Brown Rd is like driving between two trash levees 10 ft high and 15 feet wide all made of trash...furniture, lumber, carpets, dry wall, insulation, toys, clothing. It is the saddest thing I have ever seen. These are my pictures: http://s140.photobucket.com/albums/r26/LaniKaye221/Nashville%20floods/ Please continue to pray.

Yep, it's all metal and the side edges are rolled for added strength... The two things that most people don't like about it are that it rusts if you don't wash and dry it right after use and that it's not adjustable... Personally I wouldn't be without one, makes great Cole slaw and slices potatoes and carrots almost paper thin, in a hot minute... Works great on salad cucumbers but the big seeds on regular cucumbers cause a problem... I haven't tried it on other veggies but I would guess it work... Oh and I never use the grater part of it, too hard to clean and too much of a chance you'll grate you fingers.. lol The secret to safe slicing is how you hold the slicer and your veggie... For carrots and cabbage I lay the slicer on top of a 4 or 12 cup glass measuring cup but, I guess, you can use any pot or pan with a flat rim, I hold the slicer handle, FIRMLY, with one hand, the veggie in the other and push the veggie away from me... You have to quarter your cabbage, unless it's a really small head, start out by holding a cut side towards your body with the core facing up or slightly away from you, then you have to adjust the angle so you don't grate the core too... You want to keep the rounded side towards the blades... And if you quit before you shred the core you won't hit your fingers... lol For carrots it all depends on how you want them sliced, a light quick stroke will give you thinner slices, more pressure equals a little thicker slice, hold the carrot straight up and you'll have circles, slant it and you'll have strips... I always start with the small end and quit when I'm an inch from the end... I slice potatoes into the small side of the sink, into water, the slicer is on a slant, handle on the edge of the sink, other end against the back of the sink ( I put a folded paper towel under it )... Place one end if a potato in the palm of your hand and cup all four fingers and your thumb around the sides, so it doesn't move around, as you push away from your body you're pressing down with the heal of your hand and just keeping the potato steady with your fingers.... As you pull it back let your fingers do most of the work... After a few strokes you start inching your fingers up the potato when you pull back... When you get to the last inch or two slow down and just push with the heal of your hand and pull back with your finger tips... For the last few strokes only use the heal of your flattened hand, keep your fingers out of the way... lol Rita