How do you harvest your tall fruit trees?

I used to have an apricot orchard of 9 ancient trees, well past the stage professional orchardists consider to be financially viable.

I had the kind of ladder described earlier in this rhread.  One side a pole, the side with steps very wide at the bottom and relatively narrow at the top.  It’s to be set up with a very broad triangular base, and is very stable.  The top, being so small, could be threaded up between branches, to pick regions of the tree.

I prefer tree ripened fruit, so I would leave them on the tree a lot longer.

I picked that orchard un aided at 38 and pregnant, and sold it at the age of 67, still picking the orchard unaided.

If people came by and wanted to buy, I I would sell them “orchard run” which I told them meant they might get a bird pecked one, a green ripe one.  They got what was coming straight off the tree that day.

The orchard was organic, but not certified.  What I did with the biggest part of my harvest was make “honey reduced apricots”.

Recipe:  into a 7 gallon stainless steel paella pan (very wide and very shallow for its width) pit the unwashed fruit.  A mix of a green ripe and very ripe is best, pectin from the greener ones, sugar from the ripe, most of the fruit ripe.  If the apricots blush red where they are sun struck, so much the better.

Pour a half gallon of honey into the pan with the fruit, to make the juice run.  Put the pan over a gas burner or other heat source.  Keep pitting the fruit, and adding it to the pot until the level of the honey-fruit mass is half an inch from the rim.

I had a large wooden spoon with a flat side.  It was perfect for stirring.

Stir and cook, eventually the fruit mass will become translucent and shiny, the harder fruit will have softened.  Experienced jam and jelly makers already know.  When you reach the “hanging drop” stage or sheeting stage it’s ready to go into jars.

I think I may have added lemon juice, though maybe not.

My children called it jam, but it is runnier than most commercial jam, and never sets like jelly.🤷🏻‍♀️. I got tired of stirring, and sometimes it was runnier than others.  Great on ice cream or yogurt or straight from the jar on a spoon!  Half a gallon of honey in 7 gallons total fruit reduced to 5 gallons is 1/11 honey.  It was delicious!

For many years, I lived 1000 miles from that orchard, and I would come out to harvest.  The object was to get as many apricots in to the jars to bring home as I could manage in that short time.

I heard plenty of comments about leaving the tops of the trees for the birds.  The birds don’t wait, they peck what they feel like pecking.  

Some of the trees I pruned to allow me to stand on high branches to pick the fruit.  I picked in to a 2.5 gallon pail.  I bent a wire coat hanger on the handle so that I could hook the bucket to the tree or ladder top, so I had hands free to hold on, climb and pick.

People did buy a lot of apricots from me.  It was a lovely interlude.  High up the ladder, I sometimes could poke my head up above the trees.  The view was of 1000 foot high sandstone cliffs, sunlight reflecting off green leaves and red blushed golden orange  fruit, and my pockets filled with money!  I loved that.

When the children were small, I bought them new picture books to celebrate the harvest.  They didn’t share the view from the treetops, but they could share my joy.

One other thing worth mentioning about the business of fruit … whether you have a pedestrian or towering orchard, is that the blossoms don’t come onto the trees in a uniform distribution.  My trees bloomed in the places the sunlight reached the leaves.  With a closed canopy orchard, ALL the fruit was at the top of the trees, and around the edges.

And the blossoms are determined in late fall and winter, not the new growth that comes in during the growing season.  If you want to get fruit lower to the ground, you will have to remove some of the closed canopy.  I chose to do that in stages, so that I didn’t have a year with no fruit.

Another consideration in pruning, which is probably best considered when planning and planting fruit trees, but if you end up with huge beautiful old standard fruit trees, and you want fruit nearer the ground, if you prune too hard in the winter, you get a lot of water sprouts, long straight sticks that grow too thick and don’t facilitate harvest, and look like they came from a pollarded or coppiced tree, and they will never lend themselves to a scaffold, or climbing on.

Another thing about pruning fruit trees that is more a matter of style / personal preference in where you make your cuts to shape your tree.  I have met many people arborists and fruit growers among them, who say that shade trees and ornaments get pruned a specific way with branches tapering to the growing tips, but fruit trees must not be pruned that way.  You cut branches of fruit trees anywhere along them, leaving a stump, or stimulating new growth in specific locations and creating sharp angles.  You CAN do that to fruit trees, but you don’t have to.  A fruit tree can be pruned in the same style as a shade trees is, with tapered branches rather than contortionist branches.  I think it’s a matter of paying attention to the tree, watching its responses to being pruned, and you can develop the skill, but as I said it’s a matter of personal preference not necessity.  I wanted to mention it because of how often the belief is stated with great conviction that fruit trees won’t bear if you prune them like shade trees.

My rule of thumb, is to prune for size in the summer, and shape in the winter.  That’s my reminder not to take too much off in the winter.