Yassou John... thanks for sharing your experience here. If you ever have a chance to post pictures of your veranda, I would love to see them.

This is a very old post but I would just mention that where the OP lives, killing raccoons is illegal and any trapping must be done only with live or Hav-A-Hart traps. And then you have the issue of what to do with the trapped coon........ Electrified fencing is effective and relatively easily done. Friends who lived almost in downtown Seattle - a highly populated urban area - had a small fish pond in their entry courtyard that was decimated by nightly visits from raccoons until they installed an electrified fence around it. Urban dwelling raccoons are highly adaptable and intelligent animals. And with few natural predators aside from cars and the occasional dog. I live in a much more rural area very close to Seattle and raccoon issue are much less of a concern here as the coyotes keep populations in check (as do cars....too many raccoon bodies along the side of the road). I rarely have any issues with raccoons in my garden but the deer are another problem altogether!! And do far more damage than any raccoon!!

You do not need to be above the tree to prune. You could have a branch that is 10' tall and cut it at 4'. You certainly wouldn't need to get on a ladder to make the 4' cut just because the branch is 10'. All the trees you mention except for the cherry, which you will probably kill doing what you want because they don't handle constant or heavy pruning well (and it sounds like you are going to cut a large central leader to make an open vase, which is why my old cherry tree split about 15 years after I had that idea), and the guava (which I just don't know about) fruit on last year's wood. Once you get your basic tree structure down your pruning will be replacing old branches when they get too big and heading back new branches to encourage fruiting and strength. You can bend the branches down to do the heading back and the branch replacement will be done at whatever level you decide your fruiting branches will come from. That level could be radiating from a central leader or it could be a system of scaffolds. I see a lot of overgrown "new wood" fruit trees and the reason is people didn't train them with the idea of branch replacement and to continue getting fruit they need to let the tree continue to get larger and larger. Let's say you decide your base will be cut at 4' and you will allow the trees to go no more than 10'. If the trees grow 12" a year or you head them back so they grow no more than 12" a year that means you will be replacing branches every 6 years. I don't know about zone 9 but 6 years is not a unmanageable branch. If it is you could decide to replace every 4 or 5 year branch and have an 8'-9' tree. If you are really stuck on having your trees only be 6' (which like I said above, there is no pruning reason to have to have them at head height to prune them since you will be removing well below the final height and can bend whips down to head them back) you would be cutting them off after every 2nd year. I'm not sure your trees would go for that, they may decide they don't have enough tree compared to root to bother trying to populate and growing tree is more important. I have a McIntosh that hates being espaliered to 5' and it's always trying to grow more tree instead of getting heavy with fruit. You may have to do some root pruning to make them satisfied with 6' of tree or do some other stress/extra dwarfing techniques to cause them to bear heavy so they don't have the energy to make more tree.

Hi Eskota, Pruning sealer is something that Gator and I disagree on. As has been mentioned, Linda Chalker-Scott is not the end-all authority for horticulture, but at least her conclusions are scientifically based. Below is a link of what she has to say regarding pruning sealer. I do think Bug Juice could have a small slight residual benefit if you are concerned about borers colonizing a pruning wound. Not that there is anything particularly special about Bug Juice (i.e. Deltamethrin) vs. other pyrethroids, but any broad spectrum insecticide will tend to slow borers down. I think there could be some advantage to treating large wounds with a strong copper solution. The reason is that large wounds can take many years to heal over. If the wound is large enough the wood in the center of wound can rot before the wound calluses over completely. If that happens, it will leave a hole that could trap water in the hole and slow callusing even more. Copper is decidedly different than asphalt or caulk type products that are routinely sold for wound dressings. Copper will not seal in moisture. I will also point out that my comments regarding copper are not based upon scientific testing. They are based only on deduction and some experience. Deductively, copper has fairly good broad spectrum fungicide activity. Copper is also one of the preservatives of treated lumber. And again copper will not seal in moisture as other wound dressings can. I first learned of this idea from an arborist who posted on a different forum. He claimed to have used this treatment with good success. My experience is also anecdotal. I've tried it on one very large wound. I treated the wound a couple times in the last three years and haven't seen any rotting of the core wood yet. The wound continues to close up. It was probably the largest wound I've made (about 6"). I've made several smaller wounds 4" or less and haven't put any copper on them and they've healed up themselves. I do try to spray big wounds when I spray the fruit for insects and disease. Generally I have an insecticide and fungicide in the tank mix, so the wounds get attention of a sort. I try not to let unwanted limbs get so far ahead of me that I have to use a chain saw. I'm getting better and for the last few years I've only made large wounds where I let central leader trees (like pears) get too tall and am bringing them down slowly. Here is a link that might be useful: Linda Scott - Wound dressings