We planted fruit trees in an abandoned lower lot left cleared by previous owners when we moved into our house approximately three years ago. We live in Halifax, NS, Canada. I have read a lot of online articles, government documents, and books related to pruning fruit trees, and they all cover roughly the same ground: how to/when to. I follow the directions as best I can re: when to prune, and techniques for cutting properly. What I am utterly lacking is any sense whether or not our trees, at 3 years old, look anything like they ought to. I have seen a few pieces of fruit here and there, but am not expecting any in the early years. I am just hoping somebody can look at these and say "Great, keep them going," or "What the #@$! have you done to your trees you callous butcher?!?!" I am going for the "modified leader" style. I am keeping the heads at about 8' or so (is that a good height?) And the directions for sucker removal and dead branch removal all make sense, and I can do that just fine. But the books also say to get rid of branches that are growing upwards of 60 degrees from the trunk... or branches overlapping each other... or branches growing back towards the trunk. Is that just for scaffolding branches? Or all subsequent offshoots? Because that would leave my pear trees practically barren. The books say to have 3 or 4 scaffold branches, evenly spaced around the tree, no more than 6" apart. Some articles show a ring of 3-4 scaffold branches around the tree every 6" all the way up the trunk; others show just 3 or 4 main branches period, from bottom to top. Which is it? So, here are my trees... please don't laugh. If they survive the insects again this year, maybe I can do better next time around... Image order is: Apples 1-4, Pears 5-6, and two shots of our solitary Cherry tree. Thanks everybody... any help is appreciated so very much...

I can try to relocate it to be right in front of the window if that might help? That would be helpful and help the plant move closer to natural back-budding as opposed to forced back-budding by pruning. Can also limit leaf loss if it is currently being driven by low light conditions. More on back-budding later. Just fertilized the other day after not having done so for a while. I used the Parkwood All Purpose Plant Food, 20-20-20. Watered with a 2L dilution of the mixture. Again - helpful. I noticed the slightly chlorotic (yellow-green) coloring and thought if probably was suffering from low fertility, particularly nitrogen. The 20-20-20 is a 1:1:1 ratio fertilizer, same as 10-20-10 and 14-14-14. Your plant uses about 6X as much N as P, and about 3/5 as much K as N, so 1:1:1 ratio fertilizers aren't the best choice, for two reasons. One is they force you to use more P and K than necessary to meet the plants N needs. 'Unnecessary' fertilizer in the soil solution makes it more difficult for the plant to take up water and nutrients. Also, if you're not flushing thoroughly, using fertilizers that don't closely match the ratio at which the plant is actually using nutrients can quickly cause skewing of the ratio actually in the soil. Think of a car assembly line. If in the supply chain they could only get parts in packages of 20 engines, 20 wheels, and 20 headlights, they will soon be driven out of the factory because of all the stored parts. Better if the packages container 80 wheels, 40 headlights, and 20 engines. Fertilizers with a 3:1:2 NPK ratio come closest to providing nutrients at the exact ratio your plant uses them, and Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is the best 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer I've found to date. It also contains ALL nutrients essential to normal growth (yours probably lacks Ca, Mg, and several micronutrients) and it doesn't derive it's N from urea, as your fertilizer does, so it's easier on plants and you don't get the coarse growth you get with ureic forms of N. I let the moisture meter get to dry” in the soil all around. Moisture meters don't read moisture levels - they read electrical conductivity. Clean the probe and dip it in a cup of distilled (deionized) water and you'll note it reads "DRY". Sprinkle some table salt into the water (add some ions for electrical conductivity) and watch the needle go to "WET". It's better to use a tell so we know what moisture conditions are at the bottom of the pot. The commonly parroted advice that you should "water when the top inch or two of soil is dry" or "when the soil feels dry to the second knuckle of your index finger" are perfect examples of poor advice because the ensure you'll be over-watering if your pot is more than about 5" deep. More on a "tell" below. I try my best to let the entire soil mass is soaked and allow the water to exit the drain hole. Good, it's critical to keeping the TDS (salt) level in the soil from getting too high, and it keeps the ratio of nutrients in the soil from becoming skewed. Skewed fertilizer ratioos commonly cause antagonistic deficiencies - an excess of nutrient A makes it difficult for the plant to take up enough of nutrient B. All excess water drains out of the pot - it does not sit in the water. Good. Improving cultural conditions will make the plant less reluctant to back-bud naturally. If you put itr outdopors in dappled or open shade, it would likely back-bud somewhat w/o pruning. The added light, air movement, and appropriate fertility are the biggest contributors to natural back-budding. The relatively higher N level of FP 9-3-6 fertilizer would also be helpful. Your plant needs a pruning anyway, and a hard pruning will definitely force back-budding, but you need to be willing to prune it hard. It's not the risk you think it is; so, if you're concerned, ask for pictures of some of the work I've done on ficus trees to force back-budding. I'll wait until I hear back from you before I go any further. This might also be helpful. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

OK, it's nice that you're done but again, like Kat, we're sharing our space with our plants. So we do have to consider our brain's response to the light and the plant's. Which is not "misinformation" if you took the time to read the scientific study above. Alas, given the response, I'm going to assume you haven't done so yet but will later. Red light in the 5:1 dominant ratio to blue or 10:1 ratio to blue tends to do best. Not with blue dominant. I do have plenty of other studies with other types of plants that pretty much show the same and, of course, can quote the solar spectrum to no end (at Earth's surface, of course, in space it's somewhat different). We also weren't discussing repotting or potting up in this thread, we're discussing cutting, so I'm not entirely certain where that confusion is coming from without making some perhaps unpleasant assumptions. I'll avoid doing so for now. Cutting would, of course, not precisely be the best to be doing in December either, but fortunately...well, this is January, for starters. Nearly February. And of course, the plant will simply wait and send leaves at the proper time. Normally I'd say to leave the leaves, but... As noted, I do enhance light. A great deal. If Kat does so--following moving the plant as both of us suggested to the window, plus enhancing light with her plant light and increasing wattage--that will increase growth. Perfect? No. But it'll work and I've certainly done it many times, so if Kat has a reason she needs to cut things back now, she can if she has to. Now, as to "misinformation," no, it's simply not the way you do things. And perhaps not optimal, but entirely workable. I used my shears again yesterday. It will, as always, work out fine. One would expect misinformation to misfire. It doesn't. I can't say I appreciate the invective, but at least compared to some around here, yours is minor.

Hi there! Hi, Rachel. I'll sort through your discussion and make comments as I go. Long story short, I obtained 3 separate FLFs growing in one 14" pot and was advised to separate and repot them. The best time to repot is just before the summer solstice (21 Jun - think Father's Day). Repotting in fall sets you/the plant up for a recovery period measured in months rather than weeks, as would be the case if the plant was healthy and repotted in Jun. I hesitated for a while because they seemed happy and had new growth, but about 3 months ago I finally pulled the trigger because they were pushing each other to lean waaay out of the pot. A more appropriate response to a leaning plant is to get out ahead of the lean through directional pruning. The growth habit of Ficus is such that their leaves grow grow from the branch in sort of a spiral or helix. From above looking down, the first leaf would be at the 12 o'clock position, the next one at 3, then 6 then 9 (roughly) then repeat. By pruning just beyond a leaf facing the direction you want a new branch to grow, you can chance the direction any trunk/ branch is growing. In the figure above, a cut above the top leaf would produce a branch that would grow to the left and back. The middle leaf, as you can see, has produced a new branch growing to the right and back. Had the stem been pruned above the lowest leaf, it would have produced a branch growing to the left and forward, and the unseen leaf below the lowest leaf is almost certainly growing right/ forward. By choosing where the branch is pruned, you can change it's direction. Also, The best pruning response (most enthusiasm from the plant) occurs in summer. If you prune now, you get a winters worth of lanky growth that you really don't want to keep. It's best to prune in Jun. That way, you get a full summer of tight growth and short internodes, followed bt more lanky growth in winter. The fix for that is to remove the winter growth every year in Jun. That way you keep only the tightest growth, so you have a fuller and more compact tree. Questions? I repotted the largest one in it's own pot (it's doing well!) and potted the other two together using a 65/35(ish) mix of Fox Farm potting soil and perlite. Initially all 3 FLFs lost a couple of leaves from the shock, but ultimately were doing well until their first watering about 2 weeks after repotting. A couple days after watering, all of the leaves on the upper half of the left tree in the photo began to droop dramatically and fell off one by one over the following week (all of the leaves were newer but of comparable size to the ones on the upper right tree). It was very upsetting, but I knew the damage was irreversible - although I still don't know exactly what happened - so I just left them alone and this is where we are now. Hard to say, given the info provided. Was the tree outdoors for the summer? Odds are heavy it was either a response to a decrease in light or over-watering. The tree on the right never reacted negatively, and the one on the left seems to be done with his tantrum. The upper half of the trunk where the leaves dropped has shriveled up and seemingly died from what I can tell, along with a tiny little branch you can see on the bottom right. My question is: do I need to wait until the late spring to prune off the shriveled/dead parts, or can I cut off some of it now so it doesn't look quite so grim? Either is ok. Start cutting segments of the branch at its tip. Keep cutting segments until you find living/ green tissue or the entire branch has been removed. I live in zone 7 and know not to prune or notch for new growth until next year, but since the upper part is (very likely) dead, I don't think pruning it in the winter will trigger any new growth? Right? Removing dead tissue can't and won't stimulate back-budding; and your tree(s) won't grow until the volume of the root system is able to support new growth. This, because the plant is programmed to spend energy on roots BEFORE it spends energy on shoots. That's why the first growth from a seed is the root radicle (taproot). It sounds like it might be a while before the root system is able to support more top growth; and, you have the short days and diminished light intensity working against you until spring. Al