Training young fruit trees and the cat, goat and calf rule

Train a young fruit tree so its scaffold limbs leave the trunk at 45 to 60 degrees and grow out instead of up. We do it with light cuts to buds on the underside of the limb and with limb spreaders instead of heavy pruning, and we leave enough room to throw your neighbor's cat through a dwarf tree, a goat through a semi-dwarf and a calf through a standard.

Aim for 45 to 60 degree crotch angles

We aim for a crotch angle of 45 to 60 degrees on every scaffold limb: no narrower than 45, no wider than 60. Our friend Bob Purvis, who grows fruit in Homedale, Idaho, calls 40 to 60 degrees from the trunk ideal for setting and bearing fruit.

What the angle gets you:

• Easier harvest down the road.
• More sunlight into the canopy, and with it less disease.
• A strong joint. A narrow crotch traps bark in the joint (occluded bark) and makes a weak union, and later in life that scaffold can crack into the trunk, especially under a heavy load of fruit.

Wider isn't better, either. Purvis notes that limbs that hang down lose vigor and grow poorly, so he cuts them back to a shoot growing upward.

Make the first cuts at planting

Prune at planting. Some roots always get lost when the nursery digs a tree, and it grows better with the top cut back to match, though shipped trees likely don't need much more. Cut broken branches and dead wood back to healthy wood. Beyond that, side branches on a bare-root tree can be cut back by half or more.

• If you want a big tree and don't want low limbs, take them off now.
• If you want a compact tree and there are few low branches, make a heading cut low on the leader, 1/3 inch above a bud, just above where you want branches. Keeping it small later takes summer pruning, likely not until several years down the road.
• If you picked up a whip (a tree with no limbs), head it at breast height.

Always cut above the graft, or the tree can revert to the rootstock. Purvis sees the new limbs come from the buds 6 to 10 inches below a heading cut. On a branched tree he keeps 3 or 4 limbs, staggered around the trunk, and one leader. A strong shoot competing with the leader gets cut off or spread.

Cut to the bud on the underside of the limb

Limbs should grow out, not up. Every fruit tree's limbs turn up toward the sky as they grow, and it's our job as growers to keep cutting back to the bud on the underside of the limb, just before it turns up, so the limb keeps pushing outward. Cut about 1/3 inch beyond the bud.

Purvis adds two rules for young limbs:

• A shoot that grows out from the trunk and then curls around the tree gets cut back to an outward-pointing bud.
• A long shoot with no side branches gets cut back somewhat, which stiffens it and makes it branch. He allows no more than 18 inches of growth, since a thin limb that sets a heavy crop gets weighed down.

Spread limbs instead of pruning hard

On a tree that isn't bearing yet, spread limbs rather than cut them. Purvis prunes non-bearing apple trees lightly and trains the branches with spreaders instead, because heavy pruning delays bearing.

We like plastic limb spreaders, the Zhupoub brand in particular, and wooden ones when we need more reach. We had 50 mph gusts on April 7, 2026 and they didn't blow off. Under tension they stay put, and once a limb is trained you move the spreader to the next one. Purvis lists V- and U-shaped spreaders, which can be homemade, and uses toothpicks to hold new shoots at 40 to 60 degrees.

We recommend spreaders on all fruit trees, especially pears, which naturally grow straight up, and even more so Flemish Beauty. On pears Purvis prefers U- or V-shaped spreaders over the kind with headless nails, since nail punctures open the bark to fire blight. He also says Westcot apricot grows irregularly but can be trained with spreaders.

Leave room for the cat, the goat or the calf

Avoid limbs that cross over, and give each limb enough space above and below it. You want to be able to throw your neighbor's cat through the tree if it's a dwarf, a goat if it's a semi-dwarf, and a calf if it's a standard, full size tree. The rootstock picks the animal. About 90 of our apples and crabs are on Bud 118, which acts like a semi-dwarf in our dry Montana soils (see our rootstock page), so think goats.

Purvis takes out one of any two limbs that rub, one of any two that run parallel less than 18 inches apart, and shoots growing into the interior. He trains apples to one central leader with no competitors, in a Christmas-tree shape that lets light in and keeps the height down. He calls the central leader structurally best where winters are cold and snowy or the wind blows. Pears are the exception. One leader is fine, but several give you options if fire blight takes out one side of the tree.

When to prune each fruit, and how far to thin

Prune apples, pears, sweet cherries and European plums in late winter or early spring, on days above freezing (Purvis). Apricots and hybrid plums wait until late May, once you can see the crop. Purvis pulls watersprouts in early to mid June, before they turn woody, and we make no pruning cuts in August, when trees are hardening off (advice we share with C.J. Walke of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association).

Numbers are Purvis's unless noted. Oregon State, Iowa State and Saskatchewan extension guides thin plums and apricots wider, 6 to 8 inches apart.

Thin the fruit at dime size

Once a young tree starts to bear, thin the fruit when it's about the size of a dime, and the earlier the better. Thinning, as Purvis lists it, gets you bigger, better-tasting fruit that ripens sooner, better bloom the next year (it heads off every-other-year bearing), and more carbohydrate left in the tree for winter, which he calls very important in cold climates.

On apples, keep one fruit per spur where you can, and keep the king fruit from the center blossom, since it develops a little ahead of the others. Apricot and plum spurs stay productive 3 to 4 years, and apricot spurs last longer if you thin to one fruit per spur. After that Purvis cuts the limb off near the trunk so a new shoot can take its place. He keeps the fruiting wood close to the leader and scaffolds, and thins brushy growth out of the middle, because shaded apricot and plum spurs quit producing.

Clean tools, clean cuts

Bypass pruners do less damage to plant tissue than anvil pruners, Purvis says. Loppers handle limbs up to about 1.5 inches and a pruning saw up to about 3 inches. Dead or diseased wood can always come out, but Montana State University Extension says not to combine shaping cuts with cutting out fire blight.

For fire blight, MSU cuts 12 to 14 inches below the infection, because the bacteria run ahead of the symptoms. Cut in dry weather, and if the cut face shows reddish-brown streaks, cut lower. Utah State dips tools in 10 percent bleach or 70 percent alcohol after every cut, then cleans and oils them.

Go easy, too: MSU notes that over-pruned young trees get blight-prone.

Related guides

• What to do when your bare-root trees arrive
• Rootstocks for cold country, and why we use ours
• Plan a harvest that lasts three months, not three weeks

Where this comes from

• Our planting guide (the pruning section, including the April 2026 spreader update), our Flemish Beauty pear and Westcot apricot pages, and our rootstock page.
• Bob Purvis, Fruit Growing for Homeowners lecture notes (Purvis Nursery & Orchard, Homedale, Idaho) and his NAFEX talk Apricots: A Wider Geographic Possibility (2006). We skipped his spray and chemical thinning material.
• Pruning dates, fire blight cuts and tool cleaning: Montana State University Extension, Utah State University Extension, and C.J. Walke of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
• Thinning distances for comparison: Oregon State University, Iowa State University and University of Saskatchewan extension guides.

Updated September 2026.