Branches with Bad Angles and the 50% Rule

A good picture is worth a thousand words as they say. Below are two pictures showing a bad angled branch that should come out (Figure 1) and a branch removed following the 50% rule (Figure 2.) As plantings of apple tighten up through the Northeast and in Ontario, several things about branches and how they attach themselves to the tree have become fairly obvious.

Bad angled branches and branches that are way too strong, should have a very short life on a young tree. If left in place they will cause all sorts of grief for the grower and eventually have a huge impact on crop quality and tree manageability. Bad angles can result from certain scion rootstock combinations, can be cultivar specific or they can just happen at random.

If the cultivar is known to have a high % of breaks that come out at bad angles then the grower can direct the growth with the use of a variety of techniques. Some of these include objects as simple as a clothespin clamped onto the trunk of a young tree in June just above a newly emerged shoot. This type of device and others like it will keep the branch from growing and establishing itself at a bad angle.

Figure 1. Branch established at a bad angle needing removal.

Figure 2. Fifty % rule applied to young tree. If the branch is equal to or greater than 50% of the diameter of the attachment point on the trunk, it should come out.