Too much of a good thing led to snap-crackle-pop syndrome in my fruit orchard this year. Apples, pears, peaches, and asian pears all broke branches under the weight of an exceptionally productive season.
Cutting off ragged split and splintered broken branches now is a good idea. It will reduce the chances of a tree becoming diseased.
While late winter is the best time to prune, if you have a lot of trees - I have about fifty - you'll have to start a little earlier. With our mild climate, cold injury is rare. Always leave the branch collar when pruning close to the trunk, and never paint or tar the cut branch end.
I still have a few broken apple branches dangling because the fruit on them is still ripening. I'll cut them off when harvest time is done in another month. No point in wasting good fruit. This is a good time though to look back at what broke, so you can plan ahead for your February pruning to assure less damage if we get another bumper crop.
Another way to avoid broken branches is to prop up heavily laden trees. My seventy five year old Stanley prune produces 200 pounds a year, much to the delight of friends and relatives. It came with a set of prop sticks for good reason.
We eat fresh prunes from the Stanley, and make dried prunes. We also eat fresh plums from the asian plum and make dried plums from the tree - tart, but tasty. But you can't make a plum into a prune - unless you live in California where - for marketing purposes - the California prune board has changed the name prune to dried plum. Re-branding I guess it's just a regular part of doing business.
