We have an old apricot tree (guessing 70 years?) here in north central Washington that is doing the same thing. It’s been late to leaf, and not all branches have leaves on them. It’s picked up lately with the warmer weather but it’s still pretty bare on some branches. Doing the scratch test, some are alive while a few branches seem brittle and dead. While we didn’t get temps to -30, we did get to -15 one night, which is plenty cold for this neck of the woods. I’ve been wondering if that’s affected our tree as well. I did have a coworker tell me he thinks it’s because we’re thinning the tree instead of properly pruning it. We’ve been leaving most of the older branches and cutting off new growth that interferes with the shape of the tree, overlaps branches etc. His take is that we should be pruning the older growth and not letting the older leader branches get too big. I’ve never been around fruit trees until we moved into this house 3 years ago. This is the first summer we’ve seen this. Do you think the older branches we’ve been neglecting to prune have died and we need to clear way for new growth as my coworker suggested? I’m still researching around before I give it a buzz cut.
