Dont Be Such A Prune...

Initiation is over and I have now been accepted into the brotherhood. What on earth am I talking about? Well it would seem that after the hours of picking up branches and burning them, moving rock, wheel burrowing, and weeding I have reached the promise land. Sir Michael has moved to a different parcel of land that he takes care of and needs help with pruning. I was pretty concerned since this is his lively hood and each snip of the clippers is either helping or hurting the tree being pruned. Massive trees with branches flying in each direction felt quite a bit overwhelming. I learned things that I can use now when pruning my own trees at home. We started my the trunk and he told us that all the main productiveness happens on the outside of the tree. So most all branches that are on the inside that don’t get any light are just taking up nutrients that can be used for making smooth olive oil. Next that each branch has about 3 years that it has good production. After that it is useless and also takes up energy, get rid of it. His main rule is that if you take the branch closest to the trunk, that is going to be the oldest one and it probably can go. Once you get to the fresh ones that aren’t interfering with other branches don’t go any further. At my parents house we often prune to increase the aesthetic look. I had never actually considered how cutting a single branch can affect all of the ones around it and the tree in general. For example, by cutting a branch not at the knot, then you are in essence stimulating it to grow a few branches from where you just cut. After one tree he let us go loose and we did some on our own. At first I was pretty timid with the cuts I was making. A few leaves here, a branch there. But then I would look back and he is taking off huge trunks that “needed” to go. I loosened up a little bit and started fluttering my clippers. 4 hours later we had done about 8 or 9 trees. 170 to go. Looks like I am going to be getting great practice at what could be my back up career plan. Brian Halbach: expert olive tree pruner… has a ring to it.

Moral of the story, all stories have morals.