Any good books on pruning trees -- specifically fruit trees?

[RickF]

My parents once had a book that showed how to prune fruit trees and while they did not do it religously they followed the instructions when they did do it and it seemed to work..

I'm curious if any of you have a favorite book that covers the pruning of fruit trees primarily and possibly might cover espalier'ing citrus such as lemons/limes..

We've currently got one Santa Rosa (IIRC) Plum that can easily grow 4'+ each year (in all directions) and seems to need pruning in the off season sometime and also in the summer when it sends out another round of growth (while fruiting).

We've also got a baby fig in our front yard that is currently about 4.5' tall with an expected height of 20+ feet if I let it go..

Anyway, if you've got any good suggestions for proper pruning methods, I'm all ears! My wife doesn't like me 'hacking' on the plum tree (as she calls it) thinking that it will bother fruit production but it hasn't yet (IMHO) as we still get several hundred golf-ball sized plums every year.. This year I'd like to pick off some of the early fruit to thin it out and perhaps we'll get more normal sized plums..

 

[hoodat]

Sunset pruning handbook. You can't beat it.

 

[RickF]

Sunset pruning handbook. You can't beat it.

Thanks.. In hind-sight I think that may have been the book my parents had but I can't be completely sure! Thanks again.. I'll keep an eye out for one.

In the meantime while searching Google I found this Google Digitized book from 1902, written by Byron Lelong and others.. It's downloadable in PDF form and has some great info on what species of citrus were available at the time including many I've never heard of.. It also talks about pests, pruning and whatnot.. I'll be adding this to my collection of 'ebooks' since it's not available in hardcopy anymore..

Here's the link.. starting on the page for pruning lemons..

http://books.google.com/books?id=9l...tal cordon lemon&pg=PA176#v=onepage&q&f=false

I hope someone else finds this as interesting as I do..

P.S. If anyone can suggest a really good book covering the topic of espalier, that would be great.. It's not completely clear about whether the above mentioned Sunset book covers that topic or not.. I couldn't find any online index that was readable to find out..