Pruning Apple Trees

It's that time of year again, time to prune the fruit trees. Trees will try to grow upwards but we don't want them to so they have to be pruned.

Quite a big job on these old bramleys.

For anyone who is interested in learning how to prune their own fruit trees take a look at these Pruning Fruit Trees Courses

On Pruning Plums - David Atkins The Cuckoo in June

"Like cherry trees plum trees are very vulnerable to bacterial canker, which gets into any wound. One should not prune until May; then, when the sap is running strongly, cuts heal quickly. Even so one has to paint each cut immediately it is made."
                                     
The Cuckoo in June Tales of a Sussex Orchard by David Atkins

Photograph of plum blossom taken May day

Prunings

Prunings lying in the avenues between apple trees have to be gotten rid of somehow. Once it was a tedious task of dragging them all to a site to be burned but now we have the flail masher, sometimes known as a stick chopper for it does just that. Attached to the tractor the flail masher chops the prunings into tiny pieces which the worms then take in returning the wood to the soil.

Pruning fruit trees

The big commercial growers will have completed their apple orchard pruning by now, it's best done between December and early March before the sap rises. But for some small fruit growers, the one man band with just a few acres of apple orchard, it's a case of trying to catch up and fit everything in. It's still not too late to prune your apple trees!