nespole /loquat advice

[Mr Hopeful]

Hello. I'm not sure if this falls within the rules of what I'm allowed to ask in the homeowners section, so apologies if it doesnt. My girlfriend and I have just bought a house in Italy which needs a lot of work doing. Until we can get started on the house itself we have been tidying up the garden which has been neglected for over 10 years. After we finally finished recuing all the trees from the ivy and brambles that was choking them all we discovered we own amongst others a Nespole  (Loquat) tree. My question is does anyone have any advice on how we can prune this tree ( if we should at all) to give it its  best chance to become a well formed productive fruit barer. Its a bit one sided at the moment due so would like to see if we can get it to start growing a bit more evenly if its not too late. 

 

 

Thanks for any advice with things we can do ourselves. We havent mt any local arborists yet so would be good to have a bit of knowledge before we approach any.

[Stere]

Looks like   a animal or strimmer  or fungal infection etc has damaged  the trunk base

 

Could be why top has died back.

 

Id prune off all the dead branches & then see what happens.

 

Best idea is to find a local  or neigbour etc and ask for advice might be some fungal  disease about locally effecting them.

[Mr Hopeful]

  On 28/12/2023 at 21:58, Stere said:

Looks like   a animal or strimmer  or fungal infection etc has damaged  the trunk base

 

Could be why top has died back.

 

Id prune off all the dead branches & then see what happens.

 

Best idea is to find a local  or neigbour etc and ask for advice might be some fungal  disease about locally effecting them.

Expand  

Thank you Stere. I'm not sure what was going on at the base of the tree. I was very careful clearing around the bottom and did it by hand so I can only think its the fungal infection maybe. The damage seems to be on two sides at the base.  Is there a treatment for this? We are going back in February so will prune of all the dead wood and see where we go from there.

 

I was wondering if we should be trying to open up the centre of the tree. I cant find any information specifically on how to prune and train a nespole

[Dan Maynard]

Seems a lot of dead branches on the same side as the damage, I'd agree and just remove dead wood. Leave it a year or two and see how it goes, i suspect its struggling and removing live branches is removing ability to make food.

[Mr Hopeful]

A quick Update and request for some more loquat/nespole advice. In the spring  took the advice of removing all the dead wood and it certainly looks a lot healthier now. However we have encountered another problem which looks like some kind of disease or infection. From my research so far loquats can suffer from fire blight and leaf spot disease. Would you mind looking at these images of some leaves and the fruit to see if you could possibly confirm if it could be either. Thank you