Old fruit tree advice

[Billybonfire]

Hello to all, new to the forum but have been reading for a while.

 

I need some advice on pruning old apple and pear tree's in an orchard which is approx 80-90 years old.

Many of the tree's appear to be on their last legs and wondering if I prune them hard, would it revive them ?.

 

Any advice wold be most appreciated.

 

Bill.

[Stubby]

Hello to all, new to the forum but have been reading for a while.

 

I need some advice on pruning old apple and pear tree's in an orchard which is approx 80-90 years old.

Many of the tree's appear to be on their last legs and wondering if I prune them hard, would it revive them ?.

 

Any advice wold be most appreciated.

 

Bill.

 

Fruit tree pruning , well correct fruit tree pruning is a dark art to which I am only scratching the surface here . I have seen very old apple trees with a wound where a limb has sapped out producing so much fruit that there is a danger of other limbs sapping . In the old wound there was decompositon , soil like , and daffodils growing from it . About chest high . I kinda liked it . I think if they are old you just godda let them do their thing unless they are in the way . Then you take off what you think you can and hope they will carry on . Depends if they are your trees and if you like the apples . Someone else with more knowledge than me will sort you out in a mo .

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

More resillient than given credit for, and they are a crop tree, manage it as you NEED, it will survive.

[arbmark]

i take the view that a selective cruel cut - to initiate a growth response - and a thinning of the remainder according to the DDD & crossing is a good tonic. Once you start pruning, you'll need to go back again and again. These trees are probably at the peak of their ecological diversity so that is something you could bear in mind. There are many questions and many ways to come at this......what is the objective? any more land available for new trees?....are bearing levels important? are these your trees or a clients?

[Goaty]

Apparently apples produce the best quality fruit on 5yr or younger main branches that originate from the main trunk. This is applied in some commercial orchards.

The worthwhile life expectancy is alledgedly only 50 yr for apple and 100yr for pear trees.

 

Depends on what the owners want, maybe take 60-70% percent out now and the rest out next year or year after depending on how they come back. Ive taken fruit trees down to very little for them to crop well again later. I have taken down to a 6ft stump to recover successfully.

However ensure you cut above all graft unions. Often very visible by a wrinkle/bulge across the whole circumference and a contrast in bark on either side of union, some trees have 2 unions and 3 different cultivars e.g

 

1.rootstock for vigour,

 

2 interscion wood to ease compatability between rootstock and cultivar or to control vigour

 

3. cultivar of desired fruit variety.

Most common is just a rootstock and cultivar.

Generally if you dont cut off the main stem below 3 ft you should be safe.

I would hit em hard you have nothing to lose unless you have the last tree in existence of a variety.

[agg221]

Hi,

 

To address your question - a lot depends on the conditions in which they are grown, and what you want out of them.

 

As has been said, they are well past their commercial productive life, but then again they're so far past that it suggests this isn't really what you're looking for.

 

Fruit trees are grown on rootstocks, the selection of which controls their size, by controlling how vigorous they are. This also determines how well they can compete with weeds etc. So, big trees (30ft or so, often grown as standards) can out-compete almost anything, whilst dwarf trees (8-12ft probably from that era, on a stock called Paradise) will tend to struggle if they're grown in full grass and definitely don't like higher weeds like nettles, brambles etc.

 

Then there's the question of whether they have any particular fungal invasion - weaker roots means less able to live with it.

 

If they're just craggy, very dense (not been pruned for a long time), with small leaves, maybe yellowing, and very short extension growth every year, growing with grass right up to the trunks, a regime of pruning to reduce height and density, coupled with mulching with cardboard and something to weight it down, such as chipped bark or rotted compost, and a good dose of blood, fish and bone or any other balanced fertiliser may well work wonders. Spread the pruning out over some years (3-5) though.

 

I still look after Mum's orchard, which was planted in 1919, a mix of dwarf and vigorous rootstocks, and most of the trees are doing fine. Not looking for a commercial crop - just fruit for all the family throughout the year, which it does nicely.

 

Oh and some pictures would be good.

 

Alec

[Billybonfire]

Thanks to everyone for the advice, I am not really concerned about fruit production, just want to tidy the place up and hopefully save some of the trees.

I will try and post some photos.

Thanks again.

 

Bill.

[Billybonfire]

Hopefully some pictures attached.

[agg221]

Hi Bill, they're not as bad as I've seen in the past. Yellow leaves and grass length point to lack of nitrogen so that would be where I would start.

 

First thing I would do is get the grass cut right down, then smother it (or use weedkiller) around the trunks - make the circles about 4ft across, and apply some fertiliser. I would then think about pruning, work out what you want to do, mark up diseased branches with a spray can so you can spot them easily, but not make any pruning cuts until the leaves are off.

 

The large tree to the left in the first photo and the tree in the third photo have easy forms to come back to. The first one will come back to a single layer bush form - think mushroom; the one in the third is a classic mop-headed standard but wants some of the centre taking out to avoid smothering the lower branches. The trees in the middle photo look unusual for apples. They're high but thin. Normally when they go like this it is from bush form trees that have been planted too close together, but here they look to have always had this trunk form as the forks are narrow from the start with no sign of them having grown up from replacement water shoots. The photos are a bit dark to see, but are there plums in this orchard too, or cider apples?

 

Whereabouts in the country are you, my guess from the tree form is the west?

 

Alec

[Billybonfire]

Thanks Alec,

 

Theyre mainly pear trees but the tree on the left in the first pic is a bramley, I was thinking if I cut them to about 1 or 2 feet on the first limbs they might revive, but as you say some of the old pear trees are quite tall before any branches.

 

I'm in west lancashire by the way.

 

Bill.

[agg221]

I wouldn't just chop off branches to leave stubs. Try to take out whole branches to re-form the framework. In some cases, this can be direct, in others you will need to head it back a bit, see what grows, keep cutting back above it to keep the new low bit vigorous and eventually cut back to it.

 

I've tried to illustrate possible cuts in the pictures below. These shouldn't be taken as definitive but rather indicate the type of thing I would suggest. They also illustrate the two different approaches. The Bramley has a decent framework of branches but could be thinned, particularly at the centre, and taken down to a lower level, single tier. The pear (I presume) hasn't got the necessary lower branches, so the first series of cuts shorten branches, which will then be shortened again depending on what grows back where. The green line is an attempt to indicate a zone within which you could aim to keep branches going, but to get this shape you need some new growth from low down, which is what the cutting back is designed to stimulate.

 

Note, there are three cuts shown on the Bramley but the one on the left is to take the upward growing branch out above the one sticking towards the camera. The bits on the Bramley would be very heavy, so would need taking out branch by branch before making the final heavy cut. Doing a tree of this size in this condition using hand tools only is likely to take a whole day.

 

Alec