Extreme Pruning

We have had a list of trees that need to come down for a long time now, so at the end of this long winter, we got to work on it. This is what it looked like before.

(Those are my Mark's Choice Loppers from Home Hardware in the tree. They are awesome for cutting heavier limbs. If you are in the US you can get them through this affiliate link from Amazon. Spear and Jackson 8290RS)

This is the backyard half done, but sometimes I forget to take pictures. I'm trying to save the centre apricot because it has delicious fruit. The one on the left is mostly destroyed by sapsuckers and the fruit was tasteless and bitter, but the plum tree on the right had nice plums but had a bad fungus and then a heavy snow broke it in half, so it's a goner too.

(That pole saw is a Fiskars extendable pruner/pole saw and I do not recommend it. After a couple of months it wore a groove in the fibreglass on the first setting, so you now have to use it extended for sawing. I lost the receipt, so I couldn't take it back, but it shouldn't have done that.)

This is what the front looked like earlier today.

(The birds were quite angry after their tree got taken down. They almost killed Gerri.)

We got rid of the lilac clumps along the fence. Partly because they were useless, but also because the fence needs a lot of work and we want to plant food-producing trees and bushes. The crabapple was ornamental and in poor shape. I tried to extensive prune it last winter, but the previous people had let it get out of control. Then the heavy snow did it's job and we decided to just get rid of it.

There's a honey crisp coming in next week to replace it and we are going to plant haskaps and Saskatoons where the lilacs were.

I've been trying to save as much of the wood as I can, to give to others. The crabapple trunk will go to a friend that turns wood. It has a nice, reddish hue to it, so I hope it works for him. The rest of the fruit wood will go to friends with smokers, and all of the twiggy stuff is getting chipped in that tiny chipper. It's hard to use with a lot of it, but I just got a new set of Bahco hand pruners, so that has made the job a lot easier to cut the small stuff off.

This is looking towards the street.

(Those five balsam poplars are going as well.)

What we call cottonwood here are really Balsam Poplar. When I lived in Ontario, a lot of people called them Bambigilia, but I have recently learned that it's really "Balm of Gilead"

They are a dirty, hateful tree and are a scourge on any yard. This is the main reason.

(Those are seeds. Seeds of demons.)

They get into everything and then sprout up everywhere. We have another bunch in the backyard that must go as well.

Wish us luck, and I'm hoping that over the summer we will be able to show you a lot of transformation in our tiny yard, and a lot more food production.

Take care, and have a great spring.