How to Plant or Prune Fruit Trees for a Bountiful Harvest

Imagine having trees in your backyard that produce beautiful fragrant flowers, lush shady foliage and a bountiful harvest of fresh fruit. Sound too good to be true? It's not, not if you begin by planting the fruit trees correctly and keep them pruned. Even an old neglected fruit tree can be brought back to it's glory days of producing a bountiful harvest if it pruned correctly.

Before planting fruit trees, spend time in the area you plan to plant the fruit trees in. Pay attention to the area's water drainage, air circulation, and the amount of sun the area receives daily. Good water drainage is essential for good tree growth, damp low lying areas will need drainage tiles or another type of soil reformation to drain properly for optimum growth of fruit trees. Shallow soils may need irrigation or top soil added.

Air circulation is critical for a good fruit harvest, a dark damp area could be a frost pocket, a place where cold air gathers. If fruit trees are planted in a frost pocket, there is a strong possibility that after the fruit tree puts on buds in the early spring, that cold air will gather and freeze the buds, causing them to drop off the fruit tree and leaving you with less than the bountiful harvest you had hoped for. Good air circulation helps prevent these frost pockets, so don't plant fruit trees to close together.

The area you choose to plant fruit trees in should be in direct sunlight at least half a day.

If you already have established fruit trees, proper pruning will produce bigger and better fruit. The best time to prune all fruit trees is just before they bloom, in the early spring. Pruning allows the fruit tree to direct nutrients to branches that will bear high quality fruit. Remove all dead, damaged or diseased wood from the fruit tree. Remove all shoots from the fruit tree that are growing straight up or straight down, neither will produce good fruit. Any limb growth that is crisscrossing through the center of the fruit tree needs to be pruned away to allow for better air circulation and light penetration.