More Apple Tree Pruning

At mum and dads this time, on the orchard I planted over 20 years ago. Some of these trees are a bit younger though. 

To keep it simple I've just done before and after shots showing how I try to open up the tree in the middle to keep that goblet shape. 

Before

 

Apple Tree Pruning - Year 10

I can't quite believe I've had these trees in 10 years. Not all of them have made it, not all of them have grown that well in this shady little corner of our plot, but some have done brilliantly. 

Before

I've only took photos of a few. This one I was going to graft over as it hadn't cropped, but last year gave us great apples for a change! 

Winter tree Pruning

This is something that scares most apple tree owner. People often say to me that they don’t prune them because they don’t know what they’re doing, or I quite often see them pruned in the wrong way.

 The worst thing you can do to an apple tree, in my opinion, is not to prune it. Cutting stimulates growth, you get to shape it into a form that works for you and control it’s growth and fruiting potential.

Before

After

Before

After

Winter tree pruning can be any time from when the leaves have fallen until the sap starts to rise and the buds start to swell. I try to do mine before Christmas if I can but have been as late as March before now.
Before starting to prune your tree, step back and have a good look around it. See how it grows and the height it is. Walk around it and see it from every angle.

Now don’t fear the saw. I use a folding pruning saw and a pair of secateurs for all my pruning on my young trees, on mature trees I might use a chainsaw. If you’re not competent with a chainsaw make sure you get someone who is to do that work. It’s far harder cutting in a tree than logging firewood. I’m lucky as my brother is a qualified arborist and has taught me well.

The Dutch, who are masters at pruning and producing fruit, say that we are good at growing more wood not fruit!

mature tree before

Mature tree afterrwards  - hhandy to have two poepel on one like this, very hard to tell when you're in the tree!

As I hand pick the fruit from my trees I want them to grow at my height and no higher than I can reach. I’m not planning on grazing my orchards when they get bigger and because of this I grow all of my trees on MM106 stocks (more on this in another post). 

Before

After - not much to take off this young tree but it should help it to bush out and give more options of branches to choose to grow on. 

 The shape of the tree I’m looking for is a polo tree – one with a hole in the middle. It’s said you should be able to chuck your hat through and it not catch on any branches! 

Getting towards the right tree shape. Could do with another large branch heading towards the camera and away from it. They will come in time. 

This creates plenty of light and air flow, keeping the tree healthier, reducing diseases as well as letting in more light to ripen the fruit. 

Woolly aphid damage

Before you start cutting down branches have a look and see how much fruiting buds it has. This will give you an idea of its fruiting potential (frost and many other factors coming into play of course!). The buds are easy to tell apart, the ones growing close the branches are for leaf and the fatter ones are for flowers (and hopefully fruit). So make sure you don’t remove all your fruiting material! Also as you get more experienced be mindful if it is a tip or a spur bearer (again more in another post on that!).

First go round and remove any damaged or diseased material, looking for woolly aphid and canker, cut this material out, always cutting back to just above a bud where possible.

Look at the whole shape, make sure it’s even, look to the middle and see what’s there. If there’s a strong leader in the middle cut this out. 

Don't fear cutting big branches

Then look at the upwards growth, this will be growing the strongest, so cut some of this out or back to height that suits you. 

Any growth that is touching or covering each other is not ideal and needs to go as well. 

Remember not to cut too much any one year, I’d never go more than a third of small tree in one go. To do so encourages wood growth. Pruning can look brutal but the tree soon comes back! 

Before 

After - this tree still needs lots of work but it can be done over many years.

The key shape is a goblet, but remember you’re not trying to get his shape in one year, it can takes years to get the right shape. Also remember that if you make a mistake new branches will grow and replace them. I’ve taken a tree right back to a tall stump before now and started again! 

Try to pick out branches that are a wide angle from the main trunk. they use toothpick like things to space them on some orchards now as it will mean a much stronger branch in the future. remove narrow angle branches as they tend to want to grow upwards.

Key thing is to remember that there’s no rush. Trees are pretty forgiving, new growth will come!

Also a key thing is not to prune below the graft(the scar about 6 inches up)! Not an issue with modern trees which are grafted low down, but some older trees were grafted at head height so if there is vigorous growth low down then this can be the root stock overtaking the fruiting wood.

I wrote this for a Facebook group but decided to share it here as well. I know there are hundreds of methods of pruning but this is what I tend to do. I also summer prune my trained trees each year - but that's for another post!

Let me know your thoughts! 

Winter Fruit Tree Pruning - Year Three

Over the weekend I managed to get out and prune my orchard. 

It didn't take very long as the trees haven't put on much growth. Trees seem to take a while to establish in our clay soil and then when they do they grow like crazy.

Bramley apple tree before

I mainly removed lower branches to shape the tree and removed or reduced the upright growth. I also found a tree that had been killed by my neighbour when he mowed the grass for me in the summer. Not a big deal but I'll need to replace it fairly soon, I've a good sized tree called a winter banana growing in my nursery that might go in it's place.

Bramley apple tree after

My little orchard growing

Sorting scion wood to go in the fridge to store until the sap starts to rise

I also collected up a lot of these prunings to use as scion wood when I graft my trees in the spring. Yesterday me and my daughters start in front of the fire and wrapped up the scion wood with damp newspaper and then covered in cling film, each batch marked up with the variety. If anyone is going to try grafting this year let me know by email and I might have some scion wood spare for you.

Have you pruned your fruit trees yet (although not stone fruit!)?

Fruit Tree Pruning Talk

I had a phone call from my mum on Monday inviting me to a talk at her gardening club. It was on fruit trees by a very knowledgeable nursery man so I decided to drive the thirty or so miles and go to the talk, my brother met me there as well.

I've not been to many gardening clubs before, but lets just say that if you added the age of my brother and me together we'd still be younger than most there! We were given a warm welcome though and the speaker was excellent.

His name is Nick Dunn and he runs the nursery that I visited the year before last and he is also the author of the book "Trees for your garden" which is excellent.

His talk was brilliant (no photos sorry) he brought in many trees with him and cut them all up into how he's start different forms and shapes. Although I've been on many fruit tree pruning courses and talks before I still learnt a lot from this. He was truly passionate about it and seemed very happy to be talking to my brother and me at the end as he could see we were a younger generation interested in it.

A few random tips I wrote down are:

• Prune hard when you plant - This si something I never do but he was taking quite a bit of growth off, by half on the one tree. He says to be brave and the tree will grow a lot stronger because of it. It seems counter-intuitive but I'm going to adopt this practice and see how I get on. 

• Tie cherry tree branches downwards or break them slightly - any growth going upwards produces vegetative buds but downwards will produce fruit buds. Break them when the spa is rising.

• Bend and tie the trees into an S bend to slow the spa rising and to produce more fruit. Also some orchards are planting closer and closer together to increase competition. 

• Try to pick out branches that are a wide angle from the main trunk. they use toothpick like things to space them on some orchards now as it will mean a much stronger branch in the future. remove narrow angle branches as they tend to want to grow upwards.

• Summer pruning - I thought it was tricky to work out when but he says after the longest day you're good to go, although you might have to prune twice if they put on lots of growth.

• Figs - Prune in early autumn or summer, not in winter like I would have assumed. 

• To prevent peach leaf curl you need to stop the rain falling on the leaves until the end of may. Give the tree a cover until then that is open to the sides.

My mother keeps on to me to do some talks for gardening clubs? What do you think I could do them on? Could you do a talk to a club and what would it be on?

A Days Pruning

I was flattered last week when my brother asked me to go on a days pruning with him as he actually wanted to use some of my knowledge of fruit trees - as you all know I'm a little obsessed! I was keen and it turned out to be a really nice day, we worked hard and got a lot done and I'm really pleased with the results. 

A beautiful little smallholding with a great layout. 

 It was on a little smallholding next door to my parents farm, none of the trees had been touched for a few years as the current owners hadn't been living there long. We were concentrating on the apple and pear trees in the front garden, the house is located in the middle of the plot so the front is almost as big as the back and there was quite few trees to work on. 

Opening up a young tree creating much more light in the middle

 There was a nice mix of young and old trees to deal with, the youngest about eight or ten years going up to 30 years plus. I set to work on the small trees whilst my brother tackled the bigger ones. We were pruning for fruit production, so trying to create trees that are light and airy in the middle (a goblet shape), pruning all diseased and crossing branches first then starting to shape them. As these hadn't been touched for so long we couldn't remove too much wood this year, instead reducing some of the growth and overcrowding with a plan on tackling it again next year. If you try to take too much in one go then it puts too much energy into growing new wood instead of fruit, that's when you get lots of water shoots (quick growing upright growth).

A overcrowded small tree before pruning

Dave doing some more major work in one of the older trees

Before

After - more work to thin it out again next year.

It's fun working with my brother and he's a master of all tree work so I always learn something, but it was nice that he trusted me on what I was doing and when he's up in the tree he took my direction as it's especially difficult for him to tell the overall shape of the tree when he's in it. The last one was particularity horrible with a wild rose climbing up all through it, I didn't envy him as it was bad enough pulling the wood out and putting it in the chipper, it must have been much worse getting scratched to pieces in the tree!

An enjoyable days work and the weather was great as well, really cold but we were both dressed right so it didn't bother us in the slightest and instead enjoyed what little winter sunshine there was. 

More Orchard Purning

I spent today on my parents farm covering for dads store man who's off. As I was there for the day I took the time to prune the orchard that I planted around 8 years ago on my parents farm.

A small mixed orchard I planted around 8 years ago on my parents farm

Before we brought our little smallholding I never thought I'd be able to afford any land of my own so I planted this small mixed orchard so we'd have a good selection of fruit every Autumn. It also meant  I could enjoy growing fruit trees on a slightly larger scale than in my back garden. I've now got the start of my own orchard but I'm still going to make sure this one is productive for my parents (and for us until my trees start producing!).

Before - Lots of branches crossing over

After - The centre is much more open.
The old saying is that I should be able to throw my hat through the middle of the tree

 I used a "silky" type saw for the pruning today. I was mainly looking to lift the canopy of some of the trees (by removing lower branches) and to open the centres to let light in as well as removing any branches that cover each other.

Not a lollipop tree in site!

Bit of a bigger pile of brash than when I did my orchard!

These trees seem to becoming on quite well and some of them already have a great "goblet" shape to them. I had quite a pile of branches after an hour of pruning.

Anyone else been working on their fruit trees yet this season?

Pruning My New Orchard

The leaves have fallen and it feels a lot more like winter than it does autumn. I decided this weekend (in a break in the rain) to prune my orchard I planted earlier this year.

 Although there's 23 trees in there so far it didn't take long as all the trees are so young. I basically looked at each tree for disease or damage first.

Woolly Aphid damage on a plum tree - can look a lot like canker

Unfortunately I found some woolly aphid damage on a Victoria plum tree that I had transplanted over from my old allotment. This can easily be mistaken for canker but I could see the little buggers in there! I decided to cut away the affected wood as the tree is still young and I can train a new branch to replace it rather than having it grow weak. I also know that you're not really meant to prune stone fruit this time of year as it can encourage sliver leaf but as it was damage I decided to do it anyway.

A bottom branch removed

 Once I removed that I then looked at the trees for shape and removed any branches that I thought were too low (I'm not talking many here as they haven't got many to take!) and then looked at the top of the tree and made sure they didn't have too many heading straight up, reducing or removing them if there was too many - this was only really in some of the two year old trees I bought. I'm aiming to have "polo" trees eventually - trees with a hole in the middle or goblet trees as people like to cal them.

Cutting back a straight climbing leader

Out of 23 trees I didn't even have a handful of twigs at the end but at least I'm starting how I mean to go on. Those fruit tree pruning course I did at Pershore college a few years ago were worth every penny.

Next weekend I'm going to tackle a mixed orchard I planted at my parents farm around 8 years ago, it's just starting to be really fruitful (if you'll excuse the pun) and I've been pruning the trees every year to produce the maximum amount of fruit.

Anyone else got plans with fruit this winter - I'm really looking forward to my 22 different sorts of apple trees being delivered.