How and when to prune an Apple Tree

My father was an old New England thrifty Yankee. He once told me that to ensure an Apple Tree was properly pruned you had to visualize throwing a cat through the branches. If the cat would hit any of the branches then it was not properly pruned.

Needless to say, me being a teenager, I thought he was crazy.

About a month ago, 25 years after my father tried to teach me, I heard this saying on the radio show "The Gardening Guys."

So prune in very early spring and visualize (I repeat visualize, do not actually do it) throwing a cat through the branches.