
With a weekend during which I am not teaching last Monday and a period of warmish weather, I decided to prune my fruit trees for the first time in a couple of years. This task became more significant due to last summer’s nearly perfect growing season, which made my trees grow wildly.

Fruit tree owners know that keeping your trees cut back is a good idea for several reasons.
- Shorter, stouter branches can hold fruit better during windy conditions and as fruit weighs branches down.
- Fewer fruit on shorter branches mean individual fruit will be bigger.
- Trees taller than about eight feet require a ladder or lift to harvest, whereas short trees can be harvested by anyone without any additional equipment.
- Pruned trees have space between each other for moving and harvesting.
So for the last few days I’ve been using a Fiskars® brand limb lopper to cut back as many runaway branches as I was able to reach. It’s been pretty effective, and most of the work is done.
However, during an attempt to remedy an extra-high, extra-thick branch tonight, I pushed a little too hard, and mistakenly relied on a branch that immediately collapsed, kronking the sh!t out of my left knee.
Yeah, that’s going to leave a mark.
