Pruning fruit trees with a chainsaw

This week: Pruning fruit trees with a chainsaw; ;

I’m struggling to fathom where times goes to. Already it is Saturday afternoon again and with it comes finishing this week’s blog.

Last weekend, I realised I was having trouble again with the flue pipe on my wood stove. Even with the extractor fan on full, when I opened the stove door, smoke was exiting into the dining room. Not billowing, but none the less smelly.

Sunday was rather wet and cold, so I waited until Monday when the sun was shining, to open the inside part of the system. That way I could have the doors and windows open.

Removing the flue pipes was in itself difficult because I sealed it too well with plumbers sealant last time. I had to use a lump hammer to knock the pipes apart.

I’m certain the damp, cold and high humidity this winter is the cause, because I cleaned out more than two kilos of creosote residue.

When you burn wood, especially pine, it gives off various vapours, but mainly water vapour and carbon.

Because the steel flue is uninsulated, and outside it is cold, these gasses condense on the inside as creosote. When I removed the top of the fire, it did not look pretty.

My wood is well aged and completely dry, with a moisture content of less than 20%. However the outside weather conditions this winter has caused problems inside the flue. I have not had such a build-up before.

Once cleaned, the fire worked perfectly again. I need to keep an eye on this.

Another job this week has been preparing last week’s timber. My Makita Thicknesser machine takes timber up to 30.4 cm wide.

When I got my timber ready, I found it was 30.8 cm wide! So I set about using a circular saw to shave 3 mm off, which with the width of the saw blade made 6 mm.

I could then run the boards through the thicknesser. Next week I’ll start construction!

We are in the transition period where we have really warm and sunny days which are then follolwed by a cold wet spell.

Three times this week I have had my morning cappuccino outside, and even lunch because the weather has been so nice – that is except when it’s not!

This sums up the end of the week. Overnight Friday into Saturday we have had 31 mm of rain, more damp on Saturday morning and it is barely 10°C outside. I’m going to light the woodstove as soon as I have finished the blog…

Pruning fruit trees with a chainsaw

I’ve finally finished all the winter fruit tree pruning. It is only just in time too, because buds are swelling everywhere on my trees.

My “Pièce de résistance” has been to de-limb the Morello Cherry which I planted in the Drupe orchard.

I bought this tree as a “dwarf” bush variety. Somehow it has suddenly outgrown the row of trees it is in. Probably this is my fault because I have not really pruned it for the past two years.

What I noticed last year was that there was a huge limb which had started to overshadow the cordon apple trees in the next row.

All the trees in this orchard are supposed to be dwarf or columnar varieties, to make the most of the space available.

I have a list of all my different fruit trees and at what time of year they should be pruned. Morello cherry trees are normally pruned after the tree has finished flowering.

One reason for the late pruning is to reduce the risk of virus entering the open wounds. After flowering the sap is really flowing, so the chance of a virus entering the system is low because callouses quickly form and seal the wounds.

So this is really not the right time of year. However needs must and once the tree is in leaf, it would be hard to actually see which bits I needed to cut back.

Because of the size of the limb, I had to start at the thin end and cut back several branches before I attacked the main limb.

It took three cuts to carefully take the limb back to the main trunk.

Once I had cut the limb flush with the main trunk, I used Arbrex wound sealing compound on the whole wound to prevent anything getting into the cut.

The tree looks a lot more balanced without the limb. I suspect that there will be some shoots from the wound, but this time I will be careful about pruning any new shoots.

Spring is here

The blossom has burst on one of my Almond trees this week. Everywhere the harbingers of Spring abound.

My Borage (boražina) is in flower. with the violet blooms shining in the spring sun shine.

Borage is one of those herbs which people have probably heard of but don’t grow. You certainly don’t see it for sale in the supermarkets.

Young leaves can be eaten raw in salads or mixed with cream cheese, or used in soups. I like adding the older leaves which need cooking, when I am making my winter soups with sweet potatoes and squash.

It readily self seeds and survives the heat and dry soils of summer here, so is a useful plant to grow.

My Crocus have flowered for the first time this week too.

The bright yellow blooms brighten these early spring days. I have a lot of purple Crocus too, but they flower a little later this month.

For some reason, unlike the photographs you see of multi coloured crocus all in flower together, mine all flower at different times.

In my little grennhouse, my seeds in the heated propagator are doing well. These are the Parsley seeds which came in the 2025 Calendar.

I planted them at the very start of January and they germinated 18 days after planting. I’ll be leaving them to develop a good root system before I plant them out.

Now I’m off to light the wood stove… NCG