Alright, it’s the famous Santa Rosa plum and the hedgerow. Of course, this is a plum that’s been here for roughly about 15 years. So we’re going to work this one now, a little thinning and a little pruning, model the size and this tree is pretty good. We’re going to take back the back portion at the center of this plum, a little bit high there and we’re going to open it up for sunlight and good air flow.
I first start by removing some of these crossing limbs in here. I could do this well. There’s fruit while I’m thinning because it helps to eliminate some of the fruit as well. Here’s of course root here and what we’ll do is well first, I’m going to try to see what we can do just by eliminating the middle, cut it out that sure will be opened up a little bit right there to get some fruit and maybe we’ll take this out this side one here for height and it will open up sunlight to get an oxygen to get into the backyard as well.
Now, after a number of years of pruning, keeping trees back, you end up with problems like this occasionally. So you want to start going in and cutting your way out without cutting off too much because if it gets hot right now. If we were to heat up real bad in the next two weeks and we would exposed too much of this tree’s trunk, we’d risk sunburn and then of course other damage that would cause because of the sunburn.
Alright, here we are. We have the Santa Rosa plum, size control, taking the top up a little bit, thinned out so that we have plenty of air circulation now, good sunlight penetration.
Here we are this morning in Rancho Cucamonga, California down just about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, good low chill area. We’re in my friend, Gillian’s fruit garden and she has a lot of high density examples in here. She has apples, figs, plums, plout, peaches, persimmons, a fair amount of citrus, all these varieties were planted in a exterior form, kind of a natural style using just the wire rose for initial development and then allowing this to kind of grow out into the alley ways a little bit.
This is flavored Grenade plout, one of our best low chilly plout varieties for Southern California. As you can see, it has a tremendous fruit set on it. The main thing at this time during the month of May, and in June and early July, you just want to keep the growth in check. You want to keep the top pinch down a little bit on it. You want to make sure that growth isn’t impeding into your alley ways so just a little bit of a pruning. A little bit of cultural work at this time will make the summer growth a lot more balanced out.
One of the really unique things about this landscape fruit orchard here is it’s on a terrace. There are three steps to this terrace so where this plout looks a little big from my step down below I could get up here on the next step and I can reach every thing on the top. I can reach every branch, every piece of fruit so it’s all easily managed.
At this time, I’m just going to come in, just check the growth up here a little bit. I don’t want to do too much but I want to make sure that I’m keeping it in balance and allowing it enough time and enough space to grow up for the rest of the summer.
Here we are in Rancho Cucamonga, California. This is double delight nectarine. This is actually only second year in the ground. It’s still a fairly young tree. It’s on citation semi-dwarfing rootstock but it’s got quite a bit of bigger. It’s got a great fruit set. It’s just loaded with fruits. It’s done really well. The top skin is a little too big for me so at this time, late May I’m going to come in and just start copying at about the height that I can read and that way I’ll encourage all that new growth down well in an area where it’s easy to get through for next year.
Okay, here it is just a few strategic cuts. We’ve got it down to a reasonable height where everything could be reach from the ground, still a nice fruit set on it. Everything is ready to go.
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