Last weekend, I visited my mom and returned home with the bed of my truck filled with fruit tree prunings. What to do with this stuff?
Over the years, I’ve done four things with it. Most likely, one of these four ways of dealing with fruit tree prunings will suit your present circumstances.
Green waste disposal
First, if you want to make your prunings disappear, so to speak, then you can stuff them into a bin for green waste and the trash company will take them to the landfill and probably chip and compost them to later be used in landscapes throughout the area. This is a good option if your situation is like my mom’s, which is that she already has ample mulch under her fruit trees.
Chop and drop
If you don’t, then you might use your pruners to chop up the branches and leave them under the very trees from which they came. This creates a cycle of nutrients, where the branches break down to feed the trees.
(Indeed, there are many more benefits to keeping such a mulch under your fruit trees. See my post, “Using wood chips as mulch under fruit trees.”)
I used to treat most of my prunings this way, and I still do this when I only prune a tree lightly. The only exceptions are with trees that have thorny branches, such as lemons or pomegranates, because later you’ll get one of those thorns poked through the sole of your shoe. These days I send such thorny prunings off in the green waste bin.
Pile prunings
Yet if you have more than a few fruit trees, or you’re reducing the size of a tree dramatically, then chopping up all the prunings can take a long time and wear your hands down. As my own home orchard expanded, I began to have trouble keeping up with the hand chopping and started piling the prunings. Later, I would access the pile for firewood or sticks for the kids to play with, but mostly it became a nuisance.
Squirrels, gophers, rabbits and other animals that cause problems in a garden make homes in and under such piles of branches. The piles can also be unsightly. And they might be a fire hazard. I don’t pile my prunings anymore. Here’s what’s left of the pile I built for years:
Chip for mulch
I began chipping most of my prunings. If you also have more than a few fruit trees, it might be worthwhile for you, as well, to invest in a small chipper.
(For more on that decision, see my post, “Should you get a wood chipper?”)
The chips make great mulch under the trees or on paths elsewhere in the yard. They are chopped up more finely than you’ll ever do by hand. I also use the chips as bedding for our chickens. Unlike in my mom’s smaller yard, I can’t get enough wood chips.
One mom’s trash is her son’s treasure.
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Just planted a few peach and plum tress tress (bare root) two weeks ago. Should I trim the tip or wait till next year to trim?
Hi Steven the stud,
Check out this post: https://gregalder.com/yardposts/prune-bare-root-fruit-tree/
Hi Greg, this is probably a dumb question but i have 3yr old Pinkerton, Fuerte and Hass trees that does not drop enough leafs to provide enough mulch around the tree, however i have a ton of big banana leafs green and dried could i break it up and use that as a mulch? Just want to make sure there is not any weird nutrients in the Banana leafs that will affect the Avo roots negatively? Thanks in advance.
Hi Rossouw,
There would be no danger in using banana leaves as mulch under avocados. Bananas are often interplanted with avocados in more tropical places.
Reading your original post last year I ran out and bought my Sun Joe, works like a champ. Love creating my own mulch from tree trimmings! On a Hillside in Whittier, Thanks Greg
I love my SunJoe – the only trouble I had, with 7 large trees and 4 fruit trees was I wore it out in 3-4 months! I found a commenter elsewhere that said, “use it only 15-20 minutes per hour.” My second one has lasted 2 years so far and still going strong.
I have a flavor king pluot that I planted this year. I bought it from the nursery and it was a tree from last year. I planted it bare root about a month ago. I was looking at the base at the graft where there appeared to be dirt from when I planted. When I started wiping the dirt, pulpy wood started to come out and there looks to be an abscess about the size of a marble. The tree was watered in when I planted and got rain from our recent storm. The remaining wood is pulpy too. Do you know what this may be and a corrective measure?
Hi Dan,
Is it something you can wipe off the trunk or is it something that is inside and coming from the tree itself?
The dirt was wiped off. The pulpy wood was removed. Now there is an abscess about the size of a marble and the surrounding wood is pulpy.
Hi Dan,
I don’t know of anything you should do about such a canker at this point. But I would try to keep it dry (don’t splash it with irrigation water and don’t put mulch up against it), and I’d keep on eye on whether it is enlarging. If it remains small, it probably won’t affect the tree’s performance.
Hello , really enjoyed reading your blog . I live in Southern California. Could u recommend a fruit tree , which doesn’t grow too tall , has a good appeal in the back yard . Planning to grow one near compound wall . Appreciate your reply .
Hi Sujatha,
There are so many options. Which part of Southern California are you in? And which kinds of fruit do you most like to eat? And do you want the tree to have leaves all year or would you like the tree to lose its leaves in the winter (or you don’t care)?
Hi , thank u for the response . We r in Orange County. we love tropical fruits. Would prefer to have leaves all year round . Some thing that looks good even after fruiting . For that matter , we live all fruit trees .
How about mango?
speaking of mango, my fruit punch died… florida rootstocks seem a no no for me. My Manila is growing like crazy, this year it sprouted multiple stems out of the main trunk. There has to be at least 10 – 15 possible new branches coming out of it so I can grow the tree out as a giant bush. So the key for exotic cultivars may be grafting onto a manila mango. Mine is the La Verne nursery grown ones that everybody talks about on the Socal Tropical Fruit forums.
Even I had a small yard with a few trees, and I have the same problem;; yard waste pounds up a big hip. Buying a new wood chipper is out of question and usually under power, so last year I bought a used one on Craigslist for $50, the 5 hp was broken, I bought a new Predator 8hp engine with a few modifications, voila I have a stronger wood chipper with half a price. Now I can tackle all that pounds of branches.