Pruning fruit trees for wildlife, more particularly pruning an apple tree. This topic is pretty easy as we look for things that a commercial orchard is not. I'm looking for a big tall tree with the maximum amount of fruit I can produce falling from above! While a commercial nursery wants to walk through and pull fruit, the bigger the tree, the more fruit for wildlife! You can find fruit trees for wildlife at www.bluehillwildlifenursery.com. When building a full-size tree grafted on standard roots, you can look to go upwards in creating scaffolds of limbs that allow sunlight and air to circulate through your tree, and it's as simple as that. If you have newly planted fruit trees, I will follow two things:
Establish a central leader asap.
Do not allow a double leader to establish and remove lateral limbs below 4'.