Rejuvanating Older Crabapples

Malus, Flowering Crabapple

      Many species of Crabapple (Malus) will need pruning at some stage of it's life. Most apple orchards prune their trees every year. The flowering crabapple has become a staple of the home owners property as well as used in commercial settings. Pruning off suckers and removing dead and crossing branches will help with a stronger bloom, but also help get more air and light into the tree.Also removing older wood will allow for regrowth with future blossoms. Now is a good time to address any flowering fruit trees you have on your property that are in need of rejuvenation through pruning. 

Snap or Tear Off Suckers

Remove all or most suckers. This will allow for a healthy tree and a better bloom. Suckers are a vigorous type of growth that is usually growing straight up. Ripping or tearing off the smaller suckers will help eliminate new suckers from growing during the season. Also when you gain more confidence with your pruning you will be able to train suckers into proper limb growth with good crotches and better blooms per stem length.

All Cleaned Up

As long as you keep the rule of  never remove more than one third of the plant at a time you can be successful at rejuvenating older species of crabapples. There are several cultivars of the flowering crabapple with Adams, Christmas Holly, Sugar Tyme and White Angel some of the more popular.

All the Tools You Need

State Street, Springfiel

You can purchase most of the tools you need at the local hardware store or big box store. If you notice the ladder has one pole in the back. This orchard ladder allows us to get close and right into the tree, shrub or hedge when needed. This would be more of a specialty item and can be purchased through the nursery or other landscape supply dealers.


The State Street corridor in Springfield received a face lift not to long ago to the tune of 25 million dollars. Along with a 70 million dollar federal court house and a new 110 million computing center the area certainly is looking a lot better and there seems to be a lot more people coming and going. And they all look happy. But for what ever reason I can for the life of me ever figure out why city planners and politicians themselves never can plan for the overall maintenance of this corridor or any other project that gets completed in the manner of which this one was completed. Now I know that a very small portion of the 25 million was spent on trees, sod and other landscaping items, but to just simply leave it with no maintenance what so ever is not very good protection of our investment. On any given day you can drive the Old Boston Post Road and the litter and trash is strewn from one end to the other. Also last summer the city council and the mayor had a beef over the budget and no city terrace or tree belt was mowed or maintained for several weeks. So I would think that one of these braineacts could some how work into the over all spending bill enough money for regular and routine maintenance. Put money in a trust to pay for individual groundskeepers for these expensive public work projects. It is as simple as this. If you go to a car dealer ship and buy a brand new 45 thousand dollar car, you change the oil every 3 thousand miles don't you. Then why would we spend 25 million on a new corridor and not take the responsibility of protecting our invested tax dollar. Don't get me wrong, State Street does look better, and the money that Congressmen Neal fought for is appreciated, I just do not under stand why we can never really clean our self's up. We have a 25 million dollar roadway that looks like it needs a good car wash and an oil change.


                                                 Edward Pagliaro C.G.M.

P.S. I do not know who looked or looks more paranoid as a manager Billy Martin or Bobby Valentine.