New pruning techniques or just bad pruning?

With the advent of hand held picking machines has come about a change in pruning techniques. These pickers are on long poles about 3 metres in length. This means the picker can reach quite a height.

When all trees were picked by hand the trees were kept low for ease of picking. The more you needed a ladder the longer the picking took.

Here we have a tree that has just been pruned and it has been allowed to grow very tall as it is picked by machine. However the growth is wispy and weak and the form of the tree is ugly. Picking by hand means the tree is kept low and ensures the growth is strong and vigorous.

I think whoever pruned this tree needs to relearn the old techiques as this tree will bear less and less fruit being allowed to grow like this.

Here at Casa Margherita, we still pick by hand and so keep the trees reasonably low.