I think a lot about training apple trees because it's part of my living. I also get lots of opportunity to see the consequences of bad decisions early in a trees development a few years down the road- often my own bad decisions. What you do to develop a productive framework of scaffolds depends a lot on the variety of the tree and its rootstock. If your tree is a vigorous grower like Fuji or Granny Smith those 2 scaffold branches may be more trouble than they're worth. In such varieties a scaffold branch more than a third the diameter of the trunk at the branches point of attachment may grow with excessive vigor, delaying the trees fruitfulness and throwing your plans of a Christmas tree shaped central leader out of whack as those branches dominate. In spurry, early bearing varieties like Goldrush or Ark Black such "oversized" scaffolds will probably not be a problem because the diameter won't cause excessive vegetative vigor because the early fruiting will calm vegetative growth. If the rootstock is M26 or anything down in vigor managing vigor by removing excessviely large scaffolds may not be important. I have an article that I've written about the training of fruit trees using ratios as a guide. E-mail me if you'd like a copy.

pruning is removing unwanted portions from a plant [even removing deadwood] - any cutting you do, regardless of season - if you want to encourage vigorous new growth prune when dormant, if you want to maintain balance and control size [of individual varieties, to prevent dominance], prune in the growing season not sure you can "encourage girth", that's more a function of age and position on the tree, and you can't "discourage" legginess, which is just a result of uncontrolled vigorous growth, but you can remove it in the summer which won't encourage it's immediate return as winter pruning will which is to say, you may want to prune some of your varieties in the winter, to stimulate more vigorous growth, and prune the Liberty motherstock in summer to better keep it slowed down opinions will vary I'm sure, and your results will be different than anyone elses here :) Bill

Bob: I doubt you did permanent damage. There is still plenty of time this season for new leaves to grow in. Are you seeing significant numbers of Japanese beetles? I applied milky spore to my place in May, '06, and to my son's place at Earlysville in late July, '06, at a very reduced rate (one 40 oz. can spread over 2 acres). Neither of us has seen a Japanese beetle yet this season. Last season at this point they were everywhere, by the thousands. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

HI J, I have 3 peach trees. All have fruited in 2-3 years. I did not really amend the soil except for adding some top soil to fill the holes because I did not have enough native soil to put back. In my areas, rocks grow best. Rocks and boulders are everywhere when you dig a hole. I've fertilized the tree a bit in the spring each of the following years. I don't want to fertilize too much. If I were you, I'd get rid of competing weed around each tree and mulch it. Your apple tree looks stunted. A 3 yrs old apple tree should not look like that even in your type of soil. Not sure why, but you may want to consider relocating it. The soil in my yard is also land fill. The trees still grow decently. As for apple fruiting, I have apple trees that have fruited in 2nd and 3rd year on semi-dwarf rootstocks. My Honey Crisp is on an unknown rootstock. It must be at least 6 years old now but still have not fruited. My guess is it's on a standard rootstock which will take much longer. Make sure you have another variety of apple that blooms about the same time to cross pollinate. If there are crab apple trees in your neighborhood, you'd be all set.