MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

 We're a couple minutes into the noon hour. So I will go ahead and start things off here. My name's Mike cranky. I've kind of been in charge of this fruit track of this meeting. You are attending the third session for the fruit track of as part of the Michigan AG ideas to grow with conference. This is a conference that started last year as a response to the need to go virtual. And because of the success, we expanded it and shifted it over to include be included with the A&R communications week or a month. Sorry. And I wanted to acknowledge a couple of our sponsors who have been able to help us with the this expansion. We have different tracks occurring throughout the course of the month of March. There are 77 separate educational sessions covering things like homeowner, consumer, hard to culture, field crops, new technology, beekeeping, irrigation management, obviously fruit because you're here. And a number of other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting now. So if there's any other aspects of agriculture that you're interested in, definitely check out and see if there's any other tracks that sessions that you'd be interested in, I think it'll be well worth your worth to look. So. But today, you are in the fruit track. We are in the middle of our first week of education that our first week is discussing horticulture. And when we're discussing horticulture where basically discussing the base, the fundamentals, fruit production. We are trying to give you a breath of the topics and basically an introduction to all of these topics. And give you the, the, the tools to learn where and who to go to for more in-depth information. There's a lot to learn. We can't fit it all into one hour sessions throughout the couple of weeks. So definitely use this as these topics and these days as stepping stones. This week, as I said, is our horticulture week. We in two weeks. So we will be skipping a week, so not next week, but in a few weeks we're going to have our pest and disease week where we're going to be talking about what IPM is, integrated pest management and talking about key pest and diseases of fruit. And then we're also going to have a little bit of discussion on pollinator protection. So we have four topics are four separate days directed presentations on each of these weeks. And then on Friday we have an open panel discussion of all the presenters from that week or as many as we can get. On that Friday, we discuss questions that we were not able to get to over the course of the session sometime earlier in the week. And we also answer additional questions that you might have come up with after hearing the talks and digesting them. So definitely come back on Friday. It's going to be more integrative and more of a round robin of discussion. So today, I will stop sharing here so that Anna can pop her slides up. But today we have Anna Wallace with this She's Tree Fruit Specialist based on the ridge in Western Michigan. So I guess she's officially an apple specialists, Not a Tree Fruit Specialist. I apologize. But if you will forgive us a little bit of a trial here today, Anna and I are going to try something a little different. We because we are talking about training, pruning, crop load management. It's amazing how much overlap of the fundamentals occur between tree fruit and Small Fruit. But yet there are a couple of very specific details that do differ, differ between the two types of fruiting fruit crops. So we are going to try something a little bit different here and co present the slides. So Anna and I will be working together at the beginning on each of these slides to kind of highlight the similarities and differences, a bit different topics. And then she'll go into some specific examples on tree fruit. And then I will take back over and finish up with a special examples on pruning and training for small fruit. So. Yeah. I think with that, I I don't know. Do you want to go ahead and start us off, Anna? Yeah, That sounds great. Thanks, Mike. And thanks for trying out something new with me. I've done a little bit of co-teaching in the past, and I've always found it really engaging. So I hope that the audience will think so too. I just want to say I'm going to try to be monitoring the chat window. So if you have questions, you can amend us, we go. And that's another benefit of co-teaching with someone as I can be looking at questions while I'm talking and vice versa. I do think we have a pretty packed presentation today, so I'm not sure we'll have lots of time for questions, but if you Okay. If everyone here has the opportunity to come back on Friday, if you don't get all of the questions, do feel free to be asking them in the chat or you can e-mail us later. Gets. So I'm going to start with tree for some concepts for training pruning and crop management. As Mike side, I'm the apple specialist for MSU Extension in the Grand Rapids area where there's quite a lot of apple production in our state. So most of my examples are going to focus around apples. They will make sure to address mother tree fruit. And there is a lot of overlap between trooper it as well as small for it. So a lot of the things we'll learn about today are going to carry over from what I'd like to talk about a few concepts and then get into examples. But before we do that, let's start with some definitions. So training, pruning, or two words that we use for manipulating the trees. Training is sort of the overall direction, The growth or form of the tree that you're growing or the small fruit. I've gotta remember that, huh? The development of the structural framework. And then pruning is just the mechanical removal of a branch. So actually physically cutting out branches are purlins. And so there are other things that we can do like ending or tie England's. And we'll get into some of that later. Just wanted to clarify that. Overall, I want to remind you that there's an art and a science to pruning and training. So we're going to talk a lot about the scientific reasons by prune and train and how to do it. But also keep in mind it's the heart. There are a lot of creative systems that you have to make. So hopefully you can have fun, have an artistic perspective when you're printing your entries. I don't think that they're like the only thing I would add is when we discuss training. Training is manipulating the canopy through pruning. But it is, it can also incorporate manipulation of the canopy and the framework through the use of other equipment, such as trellis materials. So we have multiple methods through the course, uprooting of training, including training and others. Quite Yeah. So that's inspiring. Obviously what we just talked about is providing a structural framework. So the physical form that's going to support both agitated and grit growth. One of the most important reasons for training and pruning has to do with sunlight and iteration. So making sure you're maximizing the sun and minimizing shape. And that's going to be integral for a lot of reasons we'll talk about on the next slide. It's really important for maintaining your crop. So quantity, the number of fruit that you have. By cutting out bugs, you're actually removing the number for B can produce. And so you're limiting the number of fruit. And I having fewer fruit on a tree or plant. The same amount of resources are being distributed, cure for it. So those individual fruit can be a lot bigger and higher quality. That's really important. In, especially in tree fruit. We have this concept, biennial bearing that's really important to manage. And that's just the tendency of a tree to bear really heavy in one year and then much later in the other year. So you may have noticed that if you have trees in your yard, they'll have a really big, big crop in one year on year. And then hardly any for next year. So by balancing that out, having a more middle of the road crop every year, you can make that more consistent and break that by any bearing habit. It's important for renewing growth. So younger wood tends to be more productive. So it's really important to be renewing back rows so we can continue to have productive trees for other plants. I think about these 3D you sometimes I've heard, we'll talk about that dying and diseased. So anything that is completely dead on its way out or has disease on it should be removed. So if you have diseased wood that can provide inoculum for infections in the subsequent years. So it's important term and bat. And finally to improve air circulation. And so if you have a less dense canopy with better drying time, that's a much poorer environment where disease. So if you have quick drying time, you're much less likely to have infections and diseased material and your traits. So scaling out, I always think of pruning and training as a balancing act between your fruits and your shoots. So the vegetative and your productive or your crop growth. And on the picture on the right I have diagrammed a little bit. I'd like to think about this source sink relationship to your leaves are photosynthesizing. They're harvesting sunlight, capturing carbohydrates, and that's fueling the growth of the tree. As carbohydrates are going to different sinks. So that's our crop, the fruits, but it's also the new shoots that are growing and ultimately it's being stored at, I would eat cheap. And that's going to fuel the growth for the next year in the spring before it gets really sad event. So think balancing act. And one thing to think about when you're looking at this list, a lot of people that are new to the idea of fruit production and thinking about pruning and training and improving the quality of your tree beyond just planting it. You think of pruning as a, as something you do once a year. You do it in preparation for the season. But in reality, a lot of depending on the crop, you could go through and do it, manipulation work to modify and improve these qualities multiple times through the season. So think of it as a checklist for for the year rather than just a, okay, now I solve this problem now on to the next aspect of growing. So it's like it's a constant thing to be aware of. So we mentioned the sunlight penetration on the last slide is really important for a number of things that is unlocking tree graph. First of all, sunlight is directly related beats and the more carbohydrate you're capturing, the more productive your tree is going to be. It also leads to a differentiation and development, which is just when the tree is fighting. Whether the bonds are going to be vegetative, just shoots, or if they're going to be Floral and produce a crop that is dependent on sunlight, that happens right after blue. So making sure good sunlight is getting it. And if he is really important, more sunlight into the can't be also improves color quality for color of the fruit and quality of the fruit. So we're talking about sugar content and other characteristics. But that red color, that anthocyanin production is fueled are initiated. Hello, I am. Sunlight. And UV light can actually help with wound healing. So that's for pruning cuts or if, if the tracker damage at this unlike can help. I would also add to the list that it also helps with your pest and disease management program. Sunlight penetration. It can be directly related to reducing humidity in sections of the canopy or increasing temperature. Both can, which can be very hostile to certain pests and diseases. So and we'll get into that in the pest and disease week. A little more detail. Gradient this wrong. Oh, these are just some data science. I'm going to stop. That's Jackie, United States today to convince you if you are already on about how important sunlight is. We're looking at the PAR, photosynthetic active radiation, the amount of sunlight that's captured on the bottom. And then along the side, the dry matter production, so the overall growth of the plant. And you can see as more sunlight is being captured, there's more dry matter, so more growth, more crop. And then this is showing the effect that shade. So if this is your son at the top, and these bars are representing these, the top leaf intercepts, a lot of sunlight and a lot of our PAR. And then you can see there's a dramatic reduction in suddenly captured by any leaf that shaded below it. So that's directly related to the form of trees and other fruit crops. So looking at these two pictures on the right, I hope that you can identify which form is going to be better. The tree on the left and hope you can see it's sort of an umbrella shape with a lot of branches on the top. And so that's going to shade out the bottom bit of it. So that's a poor printing form. Compared to the form on the right, is more of a pyramid or a spindle shaped like a Christmas tree. And that's going to have really nice suddenly penetration as the top isn't shading up about it. So that's what we would prefer to see. And when you think of tree fruit, you, you tend to think of trees as individual entities, such as in these pictures. Once you start thinking higher density trees, or especially when you're thinking small fruit, where you have them in contiguous rows of overlap and canopies, or specifically integrated canopies, you get into hedged, hedged type type situations. So be thinking about it as almost like a long skinny plant. Actually getting to a couple of questions I just saw come in the chat are a couple of comments when you're thinking about directionality of the rows in comparison to the way the sun's moving through the, through the sky. And you need to think about how that sunlight interacts, not just with the sides of the canopy like what Ana mentioned, but decide of the entire row. So there are definite value, there is definitely value in orienting your rose a certain direction to capture the sunlight and to mitigate those concerns by bringing that sunlight in. Asos, usually the RAM carvers. Well, I've sat. So the actual incident last night in in this climate, once we get into northern latitudes, I completely agree with you. We see that in small fruit as well. Whenever possible, you get into other parts of the country, you will hear people say different things. Because at different latitudes it, you get different stressors on the, on the plants. So make sure if you're looking at other information, you are looking at same environmental conditions when looking at recommendations. Okay, now we've had a couple of concepts around turning on. First of all, the printing is a dwarfing concepts because we're removing the carbon and nitrogen reserves from the system. We, the tree or the other fruit crop will have less energy or fuel to fuel growth. So this is just a picture showing a couple of the growing points where the plant is growing from these apical meristems in the shoot and from the roots. And then there are also lateral meristems, which are just where the cambium tissue is and that's increasing the current. But if you've done a lot of pruning, you might have noticed that it seems to stimulate locally. So if you make a pruning cut, this causes the nearby buds to break, so you can get a flush of growth. Sometimes we call that a which has been so stimulating growth locally, but overall dwarf. And when I think of small fruit versus the way you described it, I will say it. The appearance of the dwarfing process is more dramatic when you look at a tree fruit system. Because trees can just get so much larger and they create so much more biomass. And so the dwarfing process can be more dramatic. But the same process does occur in, in small for, so it is something to be aware of. So pruning time is really important. Most of our pruning, I think I already mentioned this. We think about it once a year during the dormant season, in the winter. And by doing it this time we're moving a lot of that carbon and nitrogen leading to that working process. Also, it's really easy to see or tree structure at this time. So it's easy to see those cut obscured by we issue. But it is important to pay attention to the winter temperatures. Winter injury is possible that the plants are experiencing really low temperature is negative and Fahrenheit. So it's important not to be printing just before or just after. That's for asking. And I think our forecasts are pretty accurate now that you can plan around. I'm also a younger trees are more susceptible to cold sensitivity. So if you're planning out your pruning named focus on your older trees first and then move into your younger treats. All of your pruning should happen the new year. So we recommend never start running until the beginning of January at the earliest, and it can happen for now anytime it's built by break. Summer pruning also happens. Some not, not everywhere. I'm rarely to reduce shade and improve color of fruit. And it's typically around the solstice. It's a good book. But making sure not to do it too late in the season because like we just talked about it can AS and integration and some sheep weldment and those sheets if they're growing too late in the all won't hard and oftentimes in the winter. So I'm putting it around the solstice. And there are, on this particular slide, this particular topic, there is quite a bit a difference when you compare tree fruit to small fruits. You do. While there is some variability when you're talking about different species of varieties of tree fruit. These two formats fit fairly well across the, across the tree fruit, but you have quite a variability. On the small Fruit side. There are certain small fruits such as strawberries where there is no such thing as dormant pruning. There's no woody tissue to prune in the winter. Pruning is done. During the summer. Grapes in particular will, you will go through a dormant pruning and then you could have anywhere from two to four different rounds of pruning during the growth season. So we would say spring, early summer, late summer pruning because of different aspects. So you definitely need to be aware of what your particular crop or variety needs regarding pruning timing and repeated work. Great, So let's move into some are applied printing, printing techniques and terminology. Here I've got a picture from the textbook of different aspects of a tree that will be printing. So starting at the top of the tree is our central leader, and it's just the vertical axis or the vertical growing point in the tree. And then scaffold limbs or lateral branches. We usually use the word scaffold to indicate that it's a permanent limb. In some training systems, there is no such thing as a permanent laterals, so we just call them lateral branches. Spurs are really important. We'll talk about this more as we talk about specific crop, specific species. That spurs are where a lot of, um, of the fruiting bodies are formed. On trees. There are a couple of kinds of cuts, thinning cuts and heading cuts will get into on the next slide or so. And then moving down the tree roots, dockers are these growth that come from the roots that are sometimes an indication of structs in the tree. Also a certain route sacs are more prone to root soccer's. So we usually try to remove those because they're competing for resources. And waters fats are another farmer. Really vigorous vegetative growth would be from soccer. And those are the assets and resources from other crop. In, with some differences you will find in terminology when thinking about small fruits. And once again, it depends on the Small Fruit you're looking at. But with, with tree fruit, they all have a similar set of terminology in, in small for it in brambles. We thought we'd like to use the term Keynes instead of central leader, for instance, because we, you know, you will promote branching depending on which Bramble you're growing. And we will call those branches. But we don't have the terminology scaffold limb because like you said, that's semi-permanent type of terminology. And in small fruit, Everything is much less permanent. You will have canes. You will have. You talk about root soccer's. But we have multi-branch bushes where root sucker, what you would call it root sucker in a problem, it would just be a new cane for us. In certain crops. You have also rhizomes that are purposeful, re-grow. It's that are actually a good sign of a healthy plants. So once again, the terminology is overall very similar, but there are some distinct differences depending on the crop you're looking at. Here is the tours that we are now. I'm not sure who's in the audience if most of you have larger trees or smaller trees, but I think a large proportion of people joining this particular call will use lockers as one of their primary tools. So the longer your handles are, the more leverage you can get. So as a kind of a smaller person myself, I prefer longer handle so I can get more leverage. These come in a bypass or an anvil tape where the plates meet. And so we typically recommend to bypass because that would be the anvil type can squish the limb that you're trying to cut. In a lot of cases, especially if they aren't chart. We typically recommended bypass far more trees or smaller, and other crops are smaller. So hand printers are really great tool. There are a lot of hands-on some that fold up really nicely. And so I recommend having one of those. And finally, a whole printer. Old saw, is a really handy tool for reaching the top of the tree. It's really important to make sure your tool stay sharp and you invest in something that tie quality. So if you're buying something that isn't quite as nice, OD, you'll notice that in how heavy it is a well, it's doing the job. And I just can't emphasize enough to make sure, you know, that's just a little bit more to get something a little bit higher quality without recommending any specific. There's a lot of great options out there. Agreed? Agreed. And I completely agree with this list of tools. High on the Small Fruit side, I would say depending on the, the Small Fruit, 80 percent might be a little on the high side. Some people will go for Lauper, some will go for hand Bruner's depending on the crop. But the other, the only thing I would add, and I'll show a couple of slides in a few slides when I discuss the Small Fruit side of pruning, but I would add a lawnmower of some kind, a mower and or some people call them weed eaters or tremors. So that's that comes in handy for certain ones. Apical dominance is another really important concept, especially intrigued group. So this is just a concept at the terminal or apical bud exerts control over nearby bots. And what's actually happening is that apical bud is using auxins and other hormones are natural plant hormones that are requesting the other but for suppressing the other bugs from breaking. So it's inhibiting lateral bud break. So it's important in our pruning practices that we remove competing lateral so that we maintain that a predominance in certain crops. So in Apple's, it's, it's really important. So you can see a before picture and an after picture in which just one of those vertical sheets was selected as the terminal. And then all of the competing laterals, we're movement. And this is a picture of hair tree from Todd I'm wearing that is showing what can happen if you don't have astronomy book dominant. So a lot of is water sprouts form. There's lots of really vigorous growth. Hairs are really vigorous comparatively to other crops, like apples anyway. So they do this more, more often on, but this is the negative effect of removing a dominant. Nothing that I completely agree. Small fruit is very similar. In this aspect. The two types of cuts that I mentioned on a previous slide, a couple of slides ago are thinning and heading cuts. And it's really important to understand the distinction between needs because they have really different effects on the tree. A sitting cut is the removal of an entire branch back to where it connects to the previous branch where a heading cut is needed. You're only removing a portion of the French, so maybe only the tip of the branch or half of the branch. And I'm not going to read through this entire table, but I do want to point to some of the differences in a heading cut. We're removing that terminal bud. So we're removing the apical dominance. And that leads to more invigorating effect. So more shoot production. He says more lateral bugs, they're going to break. Whereas the thinning is actually the opposite and can lead to more spore spur formation. So that's more for production. And because you're removing an entire branch, you're implementing a light environment. So that's overall usually a more recommended. Although heading cuts have a place. So in particular, if you're reduced, you're trying to have permanent scaffold limbs and the tree. We need to stiffen those branches. And so one of the ways to do that is to make a heading cut and that will create more lignified tissue and more step for permanent scaffold branch. One thing to be thinking about in a, when you're thinking about some of the Small Fruit, is that the, the growth habit is going to be distinctly different. If you think of bushes or in the case of blueberries. Or you think of vine crops, such as some hearty kiwi or grapes or something like that. The where you will, where, where it appears you're cutting will look different than what Anna was just talking about and describing here. But the fundamentals are the same. So you have to think of it as a You have to adapt the thought based on the crop phenology, but it is very similar. This slide is just to show the professions if using heading and thinning cuts after a couple of seasons, the probe in country. And I'm talking specifically about hair and apple trees right now. There was a good question in the chat about what about an open center take the training system and that is typically applied to different crops like peaches, in which we're taking advantage of the natural habitat of the tree and trying to increase sunlight into that canopy. So apical dominance is handled a little bit differently. But in apples and pears, if you're using heading cuts over the course of a couple of seasons, you can see where it's just the tip and removed in the first year. The result is a flush of new growth. It's really vigorous, vertical afraid, and can result in a really dense can be compared to a thinning. You're removing the entire branch results. Now really open canopy with nice sunlight penetration and overall better tree shape and growth. Agreed. So branch angles. Another really important thing for a tree fruit, for, fortunately for it, where we recommend more of a 45 to 60 degree angle or a lot of the species that we're working with. And this is for a few reasons. A wider angle results in a stronger branch connections. So branches that are more upgrade or more brittle, a break for easily. It also reduces shoot growth. So I like to think about this kind of backwards. As trees produce fruit a sort of way down the lens. You can actually go about that the opposite way if you push down on the branches, Here's your changing the hormone production in those trees. And it actually results in less shoot growth and more for production. So that's usually what we do with branching tree for it's really easy to do when trees are young and they have limber lens. You just stick a clothes pin in that branch angle and why it until the tissue gets more lignified and then the tree will hold that shape. Now this is a place where you do see quite a bit of difference when you're thinking about Small Fruit because you, in the case of tree fruit, most of the time you're trying to create a multi-year or a semi-permanent branch. And so you're preparing and you have these fruit hanging out horizontally away from that central leader when you're trying to, to load that tree up with fruit. And so you're trying to promote healthy growth to maintain that fruit load. As one of the main reasons for this. In when you think of small for it, we do not have the same permanency of plant structures. And a lot of the fruit is born on, on rather vertical or small branches that are close to a vertical structure. So we think of more training. The, the entire structure like the entire cane of a blueberry bush, to go in the appropriate direction from the beginning. And then we prune the branches out as necessary to promote quality fruit load rather than trying to manipulate the branches. So you kinda go back one full step towards the larger structures of the plants when thinking of the same idea. Increasing the structural strength of your current of the plant so that it can support that load better. Okay, So I think there are some crossovers here between the fruit and small for it, but I think this is also where we start to type burj and where the different species diverged. So it's really important to understand the flowering habit of different apps so that you know where the fruit is going to be produced and you're pruning appropriately, starting with apples, pears, and some brambles. Eu species produce fruit and terminals. So that's looking at this branch. You can see this growth from last year. And then there's bud scar here. And behind that is the growth from the previous season. So in apples, pears, we see that this terminal bud, there are a lot of varieties where fruit is born on this terminal bud. So there are some writings were such as Fuji where they're tip Fridays or tiff errors. And so these only bear on the buret. A lot of apple varieties and he's also produce these spurs to these really short sort of cards that are kind of wrinkling appearance. And they bear fruit on the terminal part of the SFR. And those are usually formed on two-year-old growth or older. And so it's really important to know where those are. I've seen people crew, they're trees and they do a great job cleaning them all up. They look very tidy at the end. But also what they've done is remove all of these first because they look kind of gnarly and wrinkly. So be careful that you know where they are on your traits. You're not printing out your entire pot. So peaches, nectarines, blueberries, some other brambles and grapes are really different. They bear on one-year-old what? So looking at this picture of a peach, you can see this one or this branch right here is the growth last year. And all of the buttons on this portion are going to be using your flowers for this year. So pruning peaches sold about renewing, reinvigorating, using new growth because that's going to be where the fruit is preached. And then cherries, plums, apricots, can bear goes on terminals and on laterals. So you see these clusters of buds and there can be cherries, I'm sorry, apricots in all of those on a couple of year old boy or on the near went from last year. Okay. For the sake of time, I've made sure we had had the smoke-free and they're ready so we're good. And I won't go into this diagram. I just wanted to show you some resources that the pink that a little bit more as a cookie. So this is specific to fruit trees. I think most of the audience will know that most fruit trees are grafted. So that just means our cyan on the top of the tree is the variety that you want to grow. And that's crafted to a rootstock which confers size. So dwarfing. It also can help with cold tolerance and with pest resistance. And that can be the size controlling robots can be in several different classes. So worth, trees are the smallest kind of trees that are kept with pedestrian. You can manage them without any ladders. Semi dwarf for a little bit larger, and then they can move all the way up and bigger too. To full-size tree or a standard science tree. And this has a really big impact on size of your tree, but also when it comes into bearing. So a dwarf tree is much more cautious. It will start bearing fruit in the second year if you bought it and have a full crop much sooner than in a larger tree, it will stay at juveniles, not producing for several years before it starts producing aircraft. And this I just wanted to show you that the reason a lot of modern orchards have moved to these high density smaller tree. That's because the productive part of the tree, the sunlight to penetrate into these smaller trees, most of the candle is producing fruit. Compared to a larger treat, your fruit is only around the periphery and the inside portion of the tree is not productive at all. So the smaller trees are producing more crop per acre. In this graph on the right is just showing that a small tree is producing a lot more fruit. Compared to the larger trees of striped bars are producing a lot more blood. So moving into pruning apple trees, starting with nutrients, in the first year, you typically will get out or feathered tree, which just means that comes with branches. A whip is a tree that it's just a vertical on growth. And so in the first year, if you have the other tree, you're selecting a couple of nice branches that are evenly spaced with bide angles. So you can see that in the top portion of this diagram. And then in the second, third years, it's important to come concentrate on simplifying Lewis lens, which just means pruning a branch to have one growing direction or one growing. And that is to increase or decrease the amount of shade. And also to make sure that branches and trying to smart support too much growth. So simplifying lens. If you are going to a printing style that requires permanent scaffolds, they'll do some heading cuts in order to build the scaffolds. And then as you move into older trees, you continue to simplify this lens. And then we also use renewal cuts to generate new growth. So that just looks like this and just cut a bevel cut. And we recommend that that be longer on the bottom and on the top. Because what's going to happen is this Bonjour going to break. And those will produce new shoots. That will be your new limb and produce new fruit. And the next year. So making those beveled cause increases the chance that I will break on the bottom and you'll talk more horizontal movement. I'll talk about a couple of training systems. There are lots of resources on how to do these online, but just very basic concepts here. The central leader is the biggest tree that I'll talk about. These are free standing trees. They have permanent scuffles near the leaves, precocious of AT for longest decremented bearing. And a vertical axis is a semitone work style, planting their clinic slightly closer together. They still have some permanent branches that permit scaffolds, usually two to three tiers of branches. For both of these systems, you're still maintaining. Blends evenly spaced on that central leader. And then the scaffolds are selected. So they're pointing in the four different directions, north, south, east, west, around the tree distributed equally. These more modern high-density systems. One of the most common planting systems is the tall spindle or a super spindle. And these are fully working treats and they can be as close together as 1.5 to three feet apart. And the major difference in these trees is there are no permanent lives, so we're constantly renewing this lateral limbs. And they also require support. So these are, I'm Cialis assumes typically in other systems you might have to provide support in the first couple of years that ultimately the tree will stand on its own BY these systems. And our high density require in-line posts and then one to four wires like, well, like a great system to be able to fourth the tree. And we talked about peaches a little bit earlier. These are really different. Instead of having a central leader, peaches, nectarines, or instrument who've been styles to either boss or obese system. And so to do this, you select three permanent lens. And in the first year and had the tree back to those limbs, make sure they're evenly distributed, pointing in different directions, and then remove anything else on the tree. So in particular, anything that's growing down or that center and that's just heard, increase the amount of sunlight penetration and to take advantage of the natural each habit. So I'll end the tree fruit cart with just an example of how to maybe go about printing undeflected apple tree. And one of the most important things is to realize this might take several seasons to rejuvenate and old overgrown tree. This is a pretty fun science that I can't take credit for. My colleague, Dr. Terry Bradshaw, University of Vermont created this. But I hope it'll be pretty illustrated book, but you should do. The main goals of printing into collected apple tree are to remove anything instead are damaged, picking out any of those vertical water spouts, things that are tripping 20, any crossing over branches, they're inhibiting growth and sunlight continuing to thin out the sum. So looking at this tree, what we might do if the tree is too tall, the first thing you might do is reduce the tree height. So starting with your tree, if you wanted to bring down the height, you to just select another, another top growing point and cut it back to there. And this might be the only cut that you do in the first year because you remember being a lot of wood. And the rule of thumb is to remove only about 20 or 30. And if the tree each year and then you would follow up in subsequent years. But if you don't need to produce a high, you might start by just taking out the two suckers. Removing some outbreak grows to improve sunlight penetration. Taking anything out that's dripping 20, simplifying that branch that you can see it's one growing point. Picking out some crossing over branches, open up the canopy, running some more low growing branches, some more upright growth and often literary. And finally, looking at the top of the tree, selecting one liter and then removing any heating curve. So that's what your tree might look like. After a couple of years of pruning, trying to reinvigorate an old tree. Okay, Well, I have to have to claim a little jealousy for those slides that you got from Terry. Need to work on some of those for some of our small for it. Those are really fun. I don't have anything quite that detailed in how you cut, where and what. But I will kinda go over a couple of different Small Fruit examples to show how variable it is when you look at a different Small Fruit systems because we have Anna was just talking about how you can have different training systems that will impact your Canopy management, you're pruning styles and thinking about apical dominance or something like that. But when you have small fruit, you have quite variability. You can go from anything where strawberries, which almost crossed that bridge between what is what do vegetable growers do versus what do fruit growers do? Because you will have both of them growing strawberries and growing them in very different ways. And then you will go all the way up to blueberries, which can be sometimes 78 feet tall if you are growing some of the old varieties. And then you can go to grapevines that we maintain them to about six or seven feet tall. But if you let them go, they could go 3040 feet up into mature trees, which when you go into the woods around Michigan, you have seen some of our native species. So you understand that? So so we'll I'll go through a couple examples. And so for the sake of time, I'll try to be fairly quick through these and then we can answer more questions at the end or on Friday. So but we'll start from the ground and go up. So if you want to go to the next slide, Hannah, I started trying to move the slide myself. So strawberries, they grow, There's no woody tissue on these. They are, they grow new from a bear crown each year and they have purposeful regrowth from separate plants that is usually connected to the parent plant through runners. This is that example where animals like I'll route sectors are not good when you want to remove them. And in strawberry conditions, if those runners or go in the correct direction you like them, that's new fresh materials. So you gotta be thinking about that and they like to grow along the, it's like any other fruit, they don't like shade. And so the best fruiting occurs along the perimeters of the canopy. So you gotta be aware of that when you're thinking about any sort of pruning. Next slide. And so there's, pruning is a three-step process and it occurs all in the summer, it after harvest. So every spring you get brand new leafy material that comes up. And then you have a fruiting I trust that comes up and you get the fresh berries. And then after you've finished harvest, then you go through the pruning. So very distinctly different from any other fruit crops. So the first thing you do is after harvest, you'll go through and disk the ground or cut up the ground. Basically what you're doing is cleaning up any weed material between the vine or between the rows. You're cutting the runners that are going in the wrong direction so that you can narrow up that canopy. You're trying to get ahead of me and I'm trying to move me along aren't yet. And then after that's done, then you go on to step 2. So next slide. And this is where you get to the, get to do something you don't do in any other fruit crop and that's what you'd like to mow it down. Just know everything off. And what and this will help with reducing any overgrown weeds that are occurring in there as well as getting rid of any disease, Fruit, Disease leaf material. So it's a good non-chemical way of working with disease management. And then you can get regrowth through the rest of the summer to promote carbon nutrient capture that goes into the roots for and the crown for the next season. And then the step 3. Next slide. You will, depending on what weeds you have, strawberries are pretty resilient to certain herbicides. So you can actually, after you mowed down or even potentially before you've mode it down. But depending on the weeds you're dealing with, you can spray herbicides right on where the, where the strawberries are growing to help with disease management. So I know it's hard to claim that is specifically pruning practice on the, on the crop itself, but it is integral part of the pruning timing for strawberries. So I decided an elected to keep it. So next step, next, slide. If we move up a little bit, we think of some other fruiting, fruiting crops, small fruits that grow in a, in a different way. We think of raspberries or blackberries, different brambles. And they tend to grow in a biennial nature that you get two years out of a particular cane. And then it Is meant to be replaced. So you're you're removing the material that you see every two years. Now. Every year you have some near one-year-old canes and other end two-year-old cane. So you're never replacing the entire plant above-ground growth, but you are replacing ideally 50% of it each year. And depending on the type of, of raspberry you're dealing with, this is where we start getting into potential traveling systems, but it's a very simple maybe one wire, two wire system just to hold the canes vertically to keep them off the ground. Next slide. But you will have, it depends on the style or the type of Bramble that you're growing. Because you have three distinct timings and methods for pruning. You have summer bearing. It's, it's one of the terms for these summer bearing raspberries, which are typically the lighter colored raspberries there, the yellow one, some red ones that only fruit on the one-year old woods so they don't fruit the same year that, that, that prime McCain grows. So you'll get that one-year growth. Let it go for the whole year. The second the spring of the second year of that growth, you had create what Anna was calling heading cuts. And then it promotes fruiting during the summer. And then you will, at, after harvest, late summer, early fall, you remove those second-year canes and get it ready for the next season. Fall bearing. It's a little bit different because you can get fruiting two separate seasons on the same Keynes ever bearing raspberries. Red raspberries are, or where you see this? So once again, you don't prune your first year, your primal canes. And they will produce some fruit. The next spring you do cut some off, do heading cuts to get a second crop. Some people do not go with the second crop. So sometimes two, for simplicity, at the, in the fall, they will just go ahead and mode the whole thing to the ground so that you're working with brand new, fresh primer Keynes each year. So it depends on what you want to do. Moving on next slide. And then blackberries are a little bit more intense. They're closer to what we think of with some of these other crops. So you're, you're pruning consistently and you're getting laterals. And you want laterals off with those laterals. So you prune the first year, promote branching. The next spring, you do marketing to promote better fruiting, but then you're still replacing those canes at the end of that second growth season. And that's, that's what you see with blackberries primarily. Next. And then we can move on to blueberries. And here's where you get something that's very similar to what Anna was describing because they are Woody, Woody branches, semi-permanent relative to the other fruits. But unlike what the way anna describe to a tree fruit you have multi trunk branches, so multi trunk bushes. So you don't have a central leader, you have multiple liters. So that's the way you just gotta think of it differently along those lines. But next slide. And so what you'll do is follow the same mentality that Anna was describing for younger vines. Are sorry, younger canes. You will, you, you had the top of it to keep the top to keep the bush compact, promote that dwarfing process, promoting branching. You get everything's all the fruiting is on one-year old woods. So if you promote that energetic growth, that vigorous growth on a one-year-old, would you get a lot of good fruitfulness? But after about three to five years, those veins, those Keynes started dropping and energy. So once you get more mature bushes, then you start removing Keynes completely at the ground because you will get new regrowth of Keynes coming up off the ground. So once you have mature bushes, you start removing about 20 percent each year. So you're on a five-year rotation to maintain healthy, average, fruiting year on year. Okay, next slide. And then I'll, I'm finishing up with grapes. And once again, I I know we will remove and quick, but I know we're running out of time. So grapes, this, the pruning style varies greatly depending on training method. You have certain grapes that prefer very distinct trellis, same styles versus others. And I'll get to that in the next slide. But the other thing that's very important with grapes more than any other small fruit is. In the other branches, but you also prune off leaves and you prune off some of your fruit very actively through the course of the season. Next slide. Next slide in. So not advancing. Oh, I'm trying to it's advancing. Our lions are a bit slow. Okay, Now go back, go back one. There we go. And I'm going to simplify, simplify the next couple of slides. But basically you have two different types of grapes that we can grow here in the US. In this part up in Michigan. And that's the European vinifera style wine grapes. And those are things that will produce a carb, like Cabernet, Sauvignon grapes, or Merleau or chardonnay or Riesling. These have a very distinct upright growth, so they like certain traversing. The American varieties like Concorde or Niagara, or even the hybrids that are basically a combination of those two. Generally like a drooping style of canopy management. So you need to set up the trellis thing separately. Next slide. Maybe. Seems like it's like I'm sorry about. Okay. Yep, that's on the next slide. And so when you're thinking about European grapes, you're thinking about vertical growth. So you want to promote that. You set up a trellis sing method that where you have trunk very similar to a tree fruit scenario, but you have usually two separate, we would call them core Don's or canes that are horizontal in nature. And then you get vertical growth off of buds, off of those horizontal canes. And that horizontal growth is where you get the new grapes for that season. And that's where the vast majority of your new shoot and leaf growth occurs. And there are certain methods of promoting this each year there's spur pruning cane pruning, hybrids of those and those can be talked about in more depth another time. But the general structure is what you see here. When you talk about the American varieties, you have very distinct. They like to droop, they like to hang. So you set up the same structure, but it's those Caines are those core downs are sitting at the top of the trellis instead of the bottom of the trellis and everything droops down. Yeah. Next slide. And I'll skip this one. I just wanted to show that there's multiple other methods pruning grapes. And they all have their distinct difference, distinct values. But the most of them are much more complicated to maintain. And if you get into these methods, then there's a lot more in depth discussion necessary. And then you host, as I mentioned, you also have canopy management and crap load management. Grapes are very susceptible to a number of diseases. And the quality of the grape is greatly dependent upon the its maturation in relation to sun exposure. So in both of those cases, it's really valuable to remove leaves around the grapes themselves, the clusters you leave the rest of the leaves on for growth, but you want to remove the leaves from around the grapes to promote sunlight penetration and reduce the disease stresses. And then also most grapes like to overproduce. So a lot of growers will remove a certain percentage of their grapes to promote, more, promote higher quality grapes that'll turn into higher-quality juice, higher quality wine, higher quality, eating fresh as well. So in each, each different cultivar has different to different balances. But you're generally thinking of two to three clusters per shoot. Maybe last depending on the variety. So I'll stop with that. All right. So the last thing we are just a couple of greens. I'm a reminder that training and pruning or I'm earliest manage the shape, the growth and the rock hop they are producing. And that sunlight interception is one unless credit. Components of a successful learning and training maximizing tonight. And then the system is going to depend on a lot of things that I've done, the species that you're growing, how much crop you want to produce. And those things are dependent on a lot of other things. So the site that you're on, I know that Emily, we, we've talked about site selection and starting growing fruit on a previous webinar, and also the types of plants you're growing, some insight that you're on. So those are all really important considerations. And then just going back to this training and pruning as an art and a science. So we gave you a lot of information and I'm ideas to go with, but also every girl or that I talked to you Does printing a different way. So hopefully you can have some fun with this. So yeah, I think here's our information. And so if you'd like to reach out to us and an email about questions, I've tried to keep track of questions in the chat, make I saw a couple of working with but that small for it. So if you have time, I could stay and answer some questions. I think we covered an awful lot and we did a little over an hour trying to recruit and small for it. So appreciate everyone's staying with us. Yes. Thank you for being patient with us. I think it worked out. Okay. Yeah, sure. I'm looking at the chat now and then things. Well, these are about greats and blueberries. So I'll let you come back to those in a minute. And smooth flat and some raspberries. Okay. So it's a lot of stuff like either as it is, I answered a couple of questions about tree for it. Here's a question about ground cover and I think that we're going to save at a couple of weeks when we talk about pest management because weeds are in the category of estimated expenses, hopefully we can do some weed management ground cover during that time. I agree. I did see a question and I'll answer it while I'm looking through my browser here. Asking about Marquette grapes being as they're hybrids. What do they have that up grow, upright growth or more of a drooping habit. And I will say on the slide I said with hybrids, the the growth habit depends. And I say that specifically because there are some hybrids that are capable of being grown in that upright. The most common version is VSP, that vertical shoot positioning I showed. And they yeah, so you can grow them that way. But I will also say that they are, they don't need to. They've shown in multiple studies that most of these hybrid's, as long as you're maintaining that open exposure to sunlight. Changing the the key they, the Trello sing method does not impact the quality of the grapes. And I will say doing VSP is much more complex than a, than a highway or chord on or that, that traditional American drooping method. So most of the commercial growers don't go through the effort of VSP for, for most of these hybrids. The VSP method looks prettier, but it's not going to improve your quality or production. I hope that clarifies that one. In the meantime, I did get the survey in the in the I did get it into the chat. So the survey link is in the chat for one RUP credit. And I had mentioned earlier on, but I'll mention again, we have one RUP credit for each of these sessions, for this and for our pest week in a couple of weeks. So just be ready for those if you're interested in looking at some of the other. That's another question about areas where all of our young fruiting laterals standard highlights pretty management, or maybe three or so, a certain extent. And I say this because different varieties have different needs and they, some varieties can be fruitful for more, for along in a longer life. But I would say three years is really young regardless. I generally think of five to seven year old wood is when I start wanting to pull the older branches out. Cuz you can still get fruitfulness 10 years in, but the, the quality of the fruit and the number of fruit start dropping off. So you can keep all your canes and get a really big, nice load, but it's. It's not going to be sustainable. You're going to continually start seeing a reduction in total as you go along. So by removing, say every, every five years, 20 years, at five-year-old, would you start removing some of that each year and you get into a more sustainable practice. The other thing to think about is that older, more bark covered wood is also providing, it's also a reservoir for some diseases or insect pests. So you might want to start thinking about removing that. Not just for maintaining fruit quality, but also for reducing your disease pressure. Also, Carlos answered that question in the chat. Thanks for chiming in Carlos's are very educator or the MSU Extension for things where gamma That's Carlos. You said we've removed for wood, sincere and older and rotate every year to maintain the entire Bush would not older than six years. That's about what I was that yep. Yep. Yep. Good. I'm glad I'm on board with the blueberry educator in particular. That's good to be part of a team and have that support? Yes, sir. Yes. There you go. They chose but wherever bearing strawberries or yes. Now, when you're dealing with ever bearing strawberries, I guess you're right. It is a little bit of a different game because you don't have a finish to your canopy are finished to your harvest season in quite distinct window. So yes, in that sort of case, you're going to create somewhat of a hybrid system you might go through and do some of that route cutting late in the season in preparation for the next year. But you're not going to mow the whole thing down. So yes, you're going to have more selective removal of disease material and more selective herbicide treatments. So yes, I I should have separated that out in the description. It was trying to get through a lot of information very quickly. Yeah, You did a great job. We've heard a lot of apps really fast, so hopefully everyone will give it a join us. And I'm I don't know a lot more questions that are still with us this morning ended up burning. Tell me Yes. Yes. And I see a question about increasing fusarium in the soil by you've got some concerns with herbicide practices in Strawberry Fields. I underst and that concern that is something that is is a challenge. But the, the general practice for most, most strawberry growers that had been in the industry for a long time, is to go through rotations in where you're growing your strawberries. So they'll, they'll keep a field or a section active for for a number of years. I say maybe Carlos will correct me on this. But when I talk, when I think about it, I think it's like a five to ten year lifespan for that field. And then you get that disease build up and some pest build up and some concerns in the soil. So you actually do kind of like what the vegetable growers do or the field crop growers do. And you go through a field rotation schedule and you'll you'll till all those strawberries under and you let that ground, ground go fallow for a number of years and you move on to a different block of ground and start over. So and then you just do that repeatedly. Now if you're doing it smaller scale, say you have a small section in your, behind your, your house where you have a number, plot, number of plants. That's a good spot for five or ten years and then put your strawberries in another part of your your property. So it doesn't have to just be on large-scale, even small-scale. You gotta think about that. Speaking of large and small scale, shall I had a great question. She's a homeowner and only has a pear tree. I don't mean only as a pear tree. And she asked a really great question a lot. I mean, every science far as dealing with file place and then managing that. So a large scale growers, we recommend fencing, right, to keep your app. It's a really huge investment, but it's so important at your trees. If you've got a tree in your backyard and we're trying to keep the squirrels out. Can be so challenging and I wish that I had a magic solution for you. We are going to have a webinar in a couple of weeks about wildlife management. And I recommend you do that. But also, I can tell you that squirrels are really difficult to manage for a lot of different pots. There are some repellent materials that can be used for different wildlife that are, a lot of them are botanical based solely time and it boils and a couple of other things. I know that things like dryer sheets with it smell like human things are repellent for things like fear. I don't know how effective they are for squirrels, I find swirls to the particularly annoying John in that setting. So I'm sorry, I don't have anything to add to what well, here's my answer. I have a tough time coming up with a good answer for this. And that is specifically why I asked a a wildlife specialist with MSU Extension to talk about this during our pest and disease week because I figure if anybody's going to have a good answer, It's going to be him. I'm still trying to figure out if he's going to be giving a recorded talk or an in-person talk. But either way, we can definitely get any questions to him if we don't get it and get a chance to answer him ourselves. But right now I'll say definitely come back for the for that wildlife past day talk because that he's going to be the best one to answer that. I don't have a good answer. Because I agree. It's a it's an it's an annoyance, It's a trouble. And I see Michelle Barry came in and in addition to that, asking about concords with squirrels, and I don't see squirrels eating grapes very much. The big wildlife past. For grapes, I see concords, not as much, but most of the other grapes species as birds. So that's, that's the big annoyance. And I, I know that calm chords are known to have some chemical in them that is repellent to a lot of birds. But I have myself witnessed repeated regular advancement of Turkey's just loving concord grapes. So I know that that's not the bird repellent story is not ubiquitous for all bird species. Only have a couple of people chime in, in the chat, a couple of other hospital solution. So yep. Yeah. Trapping other options that come back in a couple of weeks and hopefully we can have more information. Yes, absolutely. Well, a lot of questions have been coming in, so I hope we answered most of my I am I'm having trouble keeping up. Oh gosh. Jeanne asked us twice. I'm sorry. I won't say anything earlier. We didn't talk at all about melons. And so I don't typically think of that as something that I cover as a tree fruit person. Because they're q carpets, there's so much different than most of the plants we talked about our organizations. Do we have someone that's covering melons? I don't know. Well, I mean, when we think of melons within our discussion within MSU, we think of them as a vegetable products, so the vegetable team covers them. But I do know there's some interesting overlap because I do run across people talking about grafting melons. I hear about people, trellis saying melons, things like that. I just saw a young child to try listing them as well. And so that is once again one of those crops that you have an interesting overlap. So I wish I did an answer for you today on, on, on how to manage melons. I do know of some of the fundamentals hold true. As such, they do have that apical dominance like we were describing. So heading cuts will promote lateral branching so that you can, if that's what you're looking for, you do need to manage a healthy trend listening practices. You don't want to tie them too tight to the trellis you one, such that you would be choking off growth. You need to support the melons depending on which variety you're growing, how big and heavy they get, all that sort of thing. But they are 100% annual growth. So you don't think about year on year maintenance of a canopy. So it's all very quick. Canopy management, you manage it this year and then you're starting over from scratch. I hope that kinda gets a little bit at what you're thinking about. There. Anything more time? Yeah. I feel like that's one was say about shooting pellets. Done good. Because then it's good to do the grapes. Blueberries. We go with tremendous broadening and safety. Yes. Well, the lead valence is going to create the operon and the bird that comes in goes the square. Yes. Right, to avoid that, because so very soon his brother, President, and move on. And we're going to really be the bedroom with a bell. Yeah, when you get into commercial systems, you do have things like air canons that are more sound and compression, air compression devices rather than lead pellets that do a similar thing. But don't leave the residue. So think about not just what you're managing at the moment, but what you're doing to your environment, to your tree, to your Bush, to your field over time, and so manage that appropriately. And Julie, I think Juliet, you're the one that brought up I think early on you mentioned clean tools when we were talking about keeping them sharp and we never got back to that. So that is a very important thing that we seem to have glossed over on the slide. So, good catch.