BLOG: Pruning Gone Wrong

This week Ron, my husband, asked our son Jon if he could borrow his electric hedge trimmers. I felt a bit of angst, and so, as casually as I could, I asked “Why do you need Jon’s electric hedge trimmers?”

Now in some circles that might be called “nagging” or “micro-managing”, but a past event, of course involving my grandmother, has shaped my reaction to pruning for all time.

Our yard in Phoenix was large by today’s standards. I don’t know how big it actually was, but my mom said it was “two lots”. I know it seemed big to a small girl. Anyway, it was big enough to accommodate all the trees Momo planted after she moved in, five years before I was born.

Among these trees were two plums, an almond, a fig, a sour orange, a tangerine, and the ones she liked the best – two apricots. By the time I was aware of them she had nurtured them to adulthood, carefully cutting off the “suckers” and thinning the early fruit so the remaining ones would grow big and sweet. Many times I went with her as she reached up with her long-handled pruning shears and lopped off a few small branches. Then I would carry them to the trash for her. She explained to me how important it was to “cull” the fruit, because if the tree had to put all its energy into nourishing thousands of apricots, small ones would result. She told me children were like fruit trees, and parents need a wise, and light, touch.

As the fruit ripened and the birds came, she and my Dad would cover the trees with cheesecloth, careful to pin up the undersides so that no greedy bird would get caught.

But, the day came when she could no longer reach the suckers, and the branches were too thick for her strength. And so, one fateful year, she asked my dad to prune the apricot trees. “Sure!” he said. And he plugged in the hedge trimmers and turned them on.

I sat and watched him, in wonder at the stark contrast between his method and Momo’s. Large branches fell to the ground, one after another, and soon only the trunks, topped with a few spikes, remained. Compared to Momo he was the Genghis Khan of tree pruners, ruthless and unsparing.

Momo came outside, looked in horror, then said, “You’ve killed them.” “Naw,” he retorted. “They needed it. You’ve been molly-coddling them.” But she was right. After one valiant, but fruitless, season, they were dead. It became a bit of a joke between them, my dad offering to prune her trees and her saying, “No thanks.”

Last week Katie asked me what “pruning” means, and why trees need it. I was my grandmother again, holding her hand and explaining about suckers and too much fruit.

I added, “You can prune a tree too much. Let me tell you about Momo’s apricot trees!”