We have a large apple tree in our front yard- in past years it’s produced hundreds of apples. One fall I made 10 gallons of hard cider out of the apples, to give an idea of the yield. Last year it didn’t produce any apples but seemed otherwise healthy.
But this Spring it never bloomed, and appeared completely dead. Very depressing. I don’t know if it was the brutal winter or what. As the summer went on I noticed some new shoots growing up from where the trunk starts to branch out that have leaves. So I’m thinking I’ll cut down the 90% of dead branches, leave the trunk and new shoots, and see what happens. We have another (smaller) apple tree in our backyard that broke in half after a storm and looked ridiculously lopsided, but in just a couple seasons it rebounded to the point it you can hardly tell. So I don’t want to give up on the front yard tree just yet. What are the chances it can come back?
Prune out the dead material, keeping it as balanced and sensible-looking as possible - it might recover, but for an apple tree to suddenly die back like that, something might be fundamentally wrong - a fungal infection or accidental exposure to herbicide.
If it’s died back to below the graft union (some trees are top-grafted), what grows back won’t bear the right kind of fruit any more - but if that’s a problem, you could get someone to graft in some new fruiting material, if it survives at all.
johnpost, so you’re saying my apple tree that appears very dead (besides the new shoots) might actually have a chance of coming back next Spring? I’m skeptical but I’d sure like to believe you might be right.
Leave the trunk with only one new shoot. If you have multiple shoots from the same trunk, they will mature leaning away from each other, and be easily blown down. You only want one vertical trunk. Prune away any V-splits close to the ground.
the limbs won’t have a chance to recover if you cut them off.
a dead twig will be dry inside and snap when bent.
trees do things like compartmentalization of wounds and damage. if there is damage and not enough to kill the tree then the tree will isolate the damage, a self pruning.
trees can get knocked back severely and survive. a tree can loose all its leaves to insects, depending on the tree and time of year and it might send out leaves again that year fully, it might take until next year to recover.
trees can also have years that pre-leaf tissue is killed by a hard winter. you might only see the little bit of life that you are seeing. if things go OK it could do good next year.
If the branches produced no blossom, that could just be biennial bearing. If they produced no leaves, they’re in trouble and are unlikely to come back to life.
I would scratch back the bark and check out the cambium, if it is nice and green give the tree a good pruning and maybe try one more season. If the cambium looks dead cut back untip it looks healthy. If the live cambium is below the graft I would remove the tree.
Thanks for the advice everybody. It’s pouring rain right now, but when I have a chance I’ll check out the twigs and the cambium to see if there’s any hidden life in the dead-looking parts. I’m not optimistic, but at the very least it would give me an excuse to put off the major work of cutting down the dead stuff until spring.
