Usually, the first thing done in the new gardening year is orchard pruning, but as this year has been a weird one, the orchard pruning is falling behind and it still hasn’t been done.

Our orchard is an old one, in desperate need of some young trees, which we will eventually plant, but until we do, we need to keep the ones that we have from going wild. There aren’t many trees left: 7 apples, 3 plums, walnut, cherry, quince, and a new apricot, which I’ve planted a couple of years ago. Still, since the orchard area is quite small, we have to prune the trees, so that they don’t grow too big. The past couple of years the only thing I prune are apples since the rest of the trees are just too big for me to reach.

I’m not an expert when it comes to apple pruning, I just follow the simple rules I’ve been taught by my dad:  

• the branches you’re pruning this year are for next year
• open the tree branches to give them air
• remove suckers
• cut the new branches above the second or third bud

And this is pretty much everything I keep in mind while pruning. Since the trees are very old there’s always a huge bunch of suckers that need to be pruned, and the past couple of years I leave that part of the job to my hubby. He is taller and can reach the upper branches easily. I’m really short, so even though my trees are quite short, I can’t reach anything past the second level.

Like I said earlier, this year I’m falling behind on pruning. Just as I started pruning we got into a cold period again and it is just impossible to do any garden work. I’ve finished lower levels on half of the trees, and then I had to stop working since the winds that started last week, are still blowing. They are not as strong as the first couple of days, but it’s still very windy. North winds hit the orchard directly, and it is impossible to prune while the wind is throwing dust and bark particles at your eyes. Also, the wind drops the warmth feeling really low, and you end up freezing after just a couple of minutes. 

In these conditions it’s hard to do any real work, well at least for me, Srećko has been working like mad. For some unknown reason, Srećko has decided that we need a tunnel in the garden and has been digging one for the past couple of weeks. Every time I go to the garden he digs in the same spot, making his hole bigger and bigger. At first, I didn’t even care, the area where he’s been digging in is our old compost area, there’s nothing there now, so it’s not a problem if he digs. But now that the hole is big enough for him to enter completely, it’s starting to be an issue. Not because of his digging, but because of the way he looks after the digging.

Of course, I had to bathe him as soon as we got home, and he was not happy about it. He hates bathing and refuses even to enter the bathroom. While we’re in the bathroom he sits in front of the door, and even when the door is opened, he won’t come in. So after the last bathing, I’ve decided that the next time we go to the garden to finish the pruning, I will bring some boards and close his masterpiece hole. 

Hopefully, this will be soon, and I’ll be able to finish with the pruning before the trees start blossoming.