Wow, very helpful! Fruitnut, you say to remove the "overly thick" and 20% of the larger branches. I know it's a dumb question, but how do I decide what overly thick and "larger" means? Harvestman, your explanation was definitely helpful! Let me ask this: if I let some of the tall vertical growth keep growing, will those bear fruit? I read that fruit only came on the more horizontal ones, but there appear to be flower buds galore on even the tall, straight, thin ones this year (though last year there were only leaves). And yes, it's grown out of the bottom of the barrel and into the cobblestones! They are 150 year old cobblestones, and there's about 3/4 inch in between each one, so there's room there... I forgot to add one fascinating fact (and question!!). That thick, low branch that grows out the right side there--that's a grafted peach branch! It didn't do too well. TONS of peaches, none of which were edible. They made the branch way too heavy, never got enough sun, the branch is smashing into the fence (and most of the fruit only grew on the end there, and they were diseased. I have NO idea what to do with that!!! Suggestions?? Because of space constraints and b/c it has grown to reach so far out beyond what it can handle in weight, I obviously need to prune it pretty dramatically. But the amt. that I figure I need to prune (to stop it from growing into the fence anymore) would basically cut back all of the vegetation and fruit. Should I do that?? THANK YOU!!!

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, Nate. Where abouts are you? I see you're a zone 5-er too. I figured I'd mention I found a bunch of citrus at Lowes today. They are tiny, but they're trifoliate grafted so they'll make good container plants. Only $10. I came home with two Washington Navels. Never thought I'd find citrus in Upstate ny, especially this late in the season. Had my hopes up around May but had given up on finding any by now. So I figured if I could find them someone else could too. Oh, and sorry for stealing your thread. :p I just thought I'd ask Mike here instead of making a new thread. Hope you don't mind. Thanks for the info, Mike. Looking back I think my problems were poor soil, too big a pot and never knowing when to water. Hopefully the gritty mix, wooden dowels and perfect sized pots will help me this year.

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