Having a go at pruning fruit trees - anyone interested?

[Treemoose]

thanks to Agg221 (Alec) for your time and sharing your knowledge with us and letting us practice/learn from working on your trees.

And to Gollum (Mark) for showing us a snippet of his expertise it was very interesting and much appreciated!

 

i few photos sorry the aren't better

we had a good range of trees to look at from small trees that needed formative pruning some that needed maintaining and some overgrown

[Treemoose]

Likeitorlumpit - Agg221 - Gollum in the pic below

[agg221]

Thanks John for sticking up the pictures. I've also got some bad pictures - the weather was more overcast than it looked, but I thought I'd stick them up to try and give 'before and after' where possible. I've got some more 'before' but I didn't get 'after' and the weather was so foul on Sunday I just cracked on with pruning. I'm back down there in a few weeks to get a bit more done (and get out the baler twine) so I'll get the 'after' pictures then and put them up as pairs. In the meantime, a couple I did get.

 

The first is quite a long way before, of the Worcester Pearmain in Treemoose's second picture, taken last spring.

[agg221]

This one is a Rosemary Russett. Treemoose (John) is about to set about it in the first picture. Second shows the finished result.

[Taupotreeman]

Can we get a few tips etc to accompany the pictures?

[agg221]

Can we get a few tips etc to accompany the pictures?

 

OK, I'll give it a go (if Mark happens across this, please do improve on my comments).

 

Treemoose's first picture shows a young Duke of Devonshire. This hasn't yet reached full size, so is in the later stages of formative pruning. You can see it has a clear stem of about 3' (bush form), and a 'goblet' shape to the top, like a red wine glass. This has been thinned out a bit, anything growing into the centre removed, and the whole thing balanced up. What you can't see is that the branches have a tendency to grow away from the large plum behind, creating an imbalance. This has been corrected, by pruning only. Talking to Mark, this will have a few branches tied down to promote fruiting, and to improve the balance that way, rather than having to take so much off.

 

Treemoose's second picture shows an old (planted 1919) Worcester Pearmain, which is also shown in my second picture. This tree is full size, and is therefore being maintained pretty much as it is, with enough pruning to maintain vigour and fruiting. This consists of keeping it down to its current height, which you can just reach from the ground, cutting out cankered and dead spurs, keeping the structure thinned out where the spur system has become too dense, and training branches to fill in any gaps. What you can't necessarily make out from the images is that only the first three feet or so up from the ground is old. Everything above this height has been renewed over the past 20yrs or so. You can also see a few young branches low down, which will continue this process.

[agg221]

Next set of three images show the same tree - a Bramley on crab stock, so it's vigorous. In the first image you can see layer after layer of long, slightly hanging branches, all on top of each other. This means they're too dense and crowd one another out, so no light and no decent fruit. It also results in a dense sail, and a lot of leverage, so more likely to damage the tree or blow it over entirely. In the other two images you can see the branches in that area have been thinned out to form a single layer. This is the layer that was underneath (keeps things lower), having removed everything on top of it. The only thing you have to watch in doing this is that the layer you keep isn't actually dead!

 

You can also see a load of young, vigorous branches growing up off the tops of the old horizontal limbs. In the later pictures you can see these have been thinned out, the strongest ones having been removed. The ones which have been left will be tied down to promote fruiting (more on this later).

 

Note the brash pile from the tree, which considering the thinning of old branches isn't that big. Take too much off and the tree will stop fruiting and go over to wood production only.

 

If you look closely at the second picture of the Bramley, low down on the right hand side, you can just about see several branches tied down with strings. They won't grow towards the nut trees by themselves, but by tying down it's possible to re-form the structure in a more balanced form.

 

Finally, note this tree was pruned from ladders, which is standard for fruit. You want the branches clothed with fruiting wood, so there is nowhere to climb. The ladder I'm up is set in to a fork, pointing in towards the tree. It goes up above the fork by enough that it won't slip out and, importantly, if the fork I'm in fails it will fall into the bigger fork you can see behind (I've stuck the ladder up an extra notch to be sure of this).

[agg221]

The next set of images are about tying down. Mark went through this procedure in detail (one of the things I haven't used before - I've been aware of it but the techniques are better shown than read about).

 

The aim is to use upright or incorrectly placed branches, and set them where they're wanted. In the branches shown this is to form the structure of the tree, but it can also be used (as on the Bramley discussed above) to make use of the rather upright, vigorous young growth and bring it into bearing to re-clothe the longer limbs when they've only got fruit growth at their ends.

 

The trees we're looking at are some dwarf St. Edmund Pippins. These are much like the Worcester Pearmain above, but at an earlier stage in redevelopment. They should have three or four main branches from low down, but most of them have lost some, which need replacing. In the picture with Mark holding the branch, you can see it being tied in. Note it forms an arc, which is OK here. However, on the other tree, you can see a similar branch being tied in which would benefit from a shallower angle at the base. To do this, making a series of horizontal saw cuts on the inner radius of the bend makes it much more flexible. The cuts close up as the branch is bent, and will soon heal over when the tree starts to grow in spring. You can see the shape of the bend achieved in the final picture.

[Treemoose]

If Alec gets to put this on next year it's well worth going to

Especially if like me your knowledge on fruit trees is limited, I feel a lot more comfortable pruning them now

[Peasgood]

Brings back memories.

I spent the winter of 1984 pruning apple trees on my own just outside Swanley village.

Truth be told a lot of it was sitting in an apple tree watching them build the M25

 

Been pruning apples all day every day for the last 4 weeks, about 3 more weeks to go too.

 

How was that for a first post?