How to proceed with old apple trees?

[Christobel]

I asked a tree surgeon to prune these old apple trees last winter, and a lot was taken off (much more than I expected). This is how they look now. I’m not sure what to do now in order to restore their shape? Really appreciate any advice. I am a complete novice, but love these old trees. 

[peds]

Neglected trees are brought back with a 3 or 4 year plan, it's absolutely something you can take care of yourself after the first (rather drastic) cuts the guy you got in made. There's different cuts to be made in winter and summer pruning sessions, as the tree reacts differently to damage done in each season. 

There's almost definitely a guy or an organic farm or something near to you offering fruit tree maintenance courses, either one day or weekend or whatever. You'd get a lot of benefit from one, and you wouldn't need to get the expensive tree surgeon in again. 

[devon TWiG]

I would leave them for a couple of years and see how they form a new crown ,and  what fruit they produce , most pruning done in commercial orchards is done to make them a shape which gives easy access to pick the fruit ... 

[BenEltham]

They have actually now excellent dimensions for proper orchard trees - well done indeed. I would take those water shoots off and seek to remove all upwards vertical new growth. Fruiting wood is caused by lateral growth so you ought to select such shoots to leave and prune others. You can prune shoots to an outward facing bud in order to promote lateral growth. Get rid of the wet green upwards ones, though (now a good time) .

 

You can also give these a summer prune in late July along the same principles of espalier pruning.

 

The water shoots dried are very helpful as kindling and airation when starting a wood burner fire.

 

Do you know the varieties? When you have fruit, take some nice photos and let us see whether we can identify them here. An app won't be able to.

 

[Christobel]

3 hours ago, BenEltham said:

They have actually now excellent dimensions for proper orchard trees - well done indeed. I would take those water shoots off and seek to remove all upwards vertical new growth. Fruiting wood is caused by lateral growth so you ought to select such shoots to leave and prune others. You can prune shoots to an outward facing bud in order to promote lateral growth. Get rid of the wet green upwards ones, though (now a good time) .

 

You can also give these a summer prune in late July along the same principles of espalier pruning.

 

The water shoots dried are very helpful as kindling and airation when starting a wood burner fire.

 

Do you know the varieties? When you have fruit, take some nice photos and let us see whether we can identify them here. An app won't be able to.

 

Thank you for taking the time to help. I would absolutely love to find out the varieties. I can’t believe I didn’t take any good photos when they were last in fruit as I spent all summer picking them up. Two of the trees produced an enormous amount, but three trees have some sort of issue/disease which is another investigation I need to do. I have inherited a plot with 10 fruit trees, 9 apple and 1 pear so I am having to learn a lot on what to do! 

[AHPP]

59 minutes ago, Christobel said:

I have inherited a plot with 10 fruit trees, 9 apple and 1 pear so I am having to learn a lot on what to do! 

Make cider, become popular.

[agg221]

If you are near Woody Paul then you are relatively near me. I would be happy to take a look when passing and give you some idea of what to take off and what to leave if that would be helpful. I am typing this on the iPhone and can’t figure how to add links but there are a couple of old threads showing an orchard I maintained which had similar objectives.

 

Alec

[dumper]

15 minutes ago, agg221 said:

If you are near Woody Paul then you are relatively near me. I would be happy to take a look when passing and give you some idea of what to take off and what to leave if that would be helpful. I am typing this on the iPhone and can’t figure how to add links but there are a couple of old threads showing an orchard I maintained which had similar objectives.

 

Alec

Take Alec up on his kind offer, you will learn more in ten minutes with him than many ,many pages of this thread, there’s nothing like actually being shown, now is the right time to be looking at the trees ,don’t leave it too long

[nepia]

Seconded re Alec @Christobel; knows his stuff and then some 👍

[BenEltham]

If you want a visual identification tool the book 'The English Apple' by Roseanne Sanders is useful -  you can narrow it down using that by season, colour, blossom type, etc.

[Christobel]

On 28/01/2023 at 10:05, agg221 said:

If you are near Woody Paul then you are relatively near me. I would be happy to take a look when passing and give you some idea of what to take off and what to leave if that would be helpful. I am typing this on the iPhone and can’t figure how to add links but there are a couple of old threads showing an orchard I maintained which had similar objectives.

 

Alec

That is so kind. The tree surgeon came back with a reasonable price to shape them so he is going to do it this year. But would love advice next year! Trees are in Sudbury.