Eddie, Julie & Annabel live in Yarraville with a few dogs and a lovely weeping mulberry tree.  Until Dan moved recently they were a few doors down.  Knowing how soft-core most folk are when it comes to pruning, when Eddie asked Dan for some mulberry pruning advice, Dan’s main message was clear: “go hard!”  Deciduous fruit trees can pump out shoots two metres long in a single spring and once you know how fast and vigorously they bounce back from a winter prune you realise you can really get stuck in to them.  Dan more so than others wrecks havoc with his felcos, and has been know to bring a 3-4m high orchard of 25+ trees down to a reachable, manageable and nettable 1.5m in less than two hours.  Anyway, when Eddie invited Dan to assess his pruning efforts, he said “I went pretty hard.” “Sure sure” Dan thought, he’s taken a twig off there, and branchlet off here.  But this is what he saw of what was previously a large gnarly weeping mulberry…

Dan smiled and nodded while thinking “gosh Eddie, I actually think you went too hard!”  Then, just three months later, this!

So fear not budding fruit-tree pruners and go hard knowing nature’s amazing ability to bounce back with renewed vigour.  That said, maybe don’t go quite as hard as Eddie and keep in mind the trade off between getting the desired form and getting fruit this season!