University of Illinois Extension Local Foods and Small Farms Educator Grant McCarty will teach Apple tree pruning on Wednesday, February 5, 2020 from 10:00 a.m. to noon at the Jo Daviess County Extension Office, 204 Vine St., Elizabeth, IL 61028. Registration cost for this program is $5 and pre-registration is required by Monday, February 3. To register or for more information on this program visit us online at go.illinois.edu/jsw or call us at 815-858-2273.

Have you recently purchased some property that has apple trees on it but unfortunately they have been neglected in recent years and you don’t know what to do with them? Alternatively, maybe you have owned the property for years but recently life has gotten in the way and you have neglected the apple trees the past few years but you want to get them back in better shape and producing for you. If either of these sounds like you, then this class is for you! Even if you don’t have any apple trees on your property, but have neighbors or relatives who do but don’t know how to properly manage these older trees and you want to help them out, you should attend.  You may have inherited property that has a number of mature apple trees. You may also have ignored and neglected your apple trees for a number of years. Whichever category you fall into, it is not too late to get your trees on the path towards productive yields.

 This course will go into the decisions you need to make when it comes to getting mature apple trees back into shape over the next couple of years. Topics to be covered include when to let go of trees, basics of seasonal/older pruning, disease/insect management, choices of tools, making the first cuts of a multi-year process, apple tree grafting options, and working through visual examples of trees that have been neglected.