I wanted to create this thread to journal my experiences and observations growing fruit trees without pruning them, possibly with extremely minor pruning, but my goal is to have some completely unpruned fruit trees to see how they turn out. If anyone else has grown unpruned fruit trees or plan to in the future, I'd love to hear about your experiences and see photos or videos of your trees!
I have a few fruit trees that were planted late last Fall that have not been pruned at all besides the pruning the nursery did before sending them. It should be interesting comparing them to my older fruit trees that had been pruned for the previous few years, and they also haven't been pruned recently in the last year.
I plan to let these trees grow completely naturally, forming thick, large canopies reaching close to the ground, if they end up growing that way.
I hope to have lots of fruit close to the ground, that can be easily picked from the ground and a lot that can be picked with pole fruit pickers also, so that ladders won't be needed. Anything above that, I plan to leave for nature, but will gladly make use of the fallen fruit if it is still edible, and I also plan on collecting the seeds from them to hopefully create new good tasting and better adapted fruit trees for my area.
I think there are a lot of benefits from growing unpruned fruit trees, and I'm excited to see how it turns out!
