It is important to continue to maintain your fruit trees if the aim is fruit production and prune them every winter to ensure a good cycle of fruiting wood. One recent instruction I had this winter was to prune and restore around 11 community orchards which contained approximately 190 fruit trees of various varieties of Apple, Pear and Damson predominately. The fruit trees had been pruned historically by a range of community groups but for various reasons including Covid-19 they had become neglected lacking their annual pruning as well as other essential maintenance causing the trees to become over crowded, congested and less productive.
Pruning focus
The focus was to prune the established fruit trees and here are some of the elements of that were carried out:
- Removal of dead, dying and badly diseased wood within the crowns to reduce further infection
- Removing damaged, snapped and broken branches
- Pruning out crossing and rubbing branches to allow more light and air flow into the crowns for better fruit production
- Pruning out vigorous laterals crowding into the centre for spur bearing varieties
- Cutting back some of the leaders for tip bearing varieties
- Thinning out the number of spurs on dense spur systems where they are congested to promote better fruit development
- Reduction of the overall crown height to bring the taller trees down to a more manageable size as part of renovation pruning of over large fruit trees
- Reshaping if lacking previous pruning to create an open goblet shape with a framework by opening up the centre of the tree through the removal of larger branches
Maintenance focus
It was also important to undertake some essential maintenance and here are some of the elements carried out:
- Clearing and removing all vegetation from around the base of each fruit tree to create a vegetation free area
- Applying mulch to the cleared area to form a mulched area as this aids to conserve moisture in hot weather, provides warmth against ground frosts and reduces weed growth as well as providing a slow release of organic matter over time to improve the soil of the immediate rooting area
- Removing any stakes that were no longer needed for support and cutting off old tree ties especially those embedded into the trunks
- Removing and disposing of old plastic tree guards that were no longer needed
- Applying slow release fertiliser (chicken manure pellets) around the base of each fruit tree within the mulch to provide a feed to aid with promoting healthy growth and giving the trees additional nutrients to produce the best possible crop
- Organising for 3 low stakes and wire to be placed around each of the trees in a triangle form set 1 metre apart to hold the mulch in place, reduce the potential for bark damage to the trunks from mower ands trimmer damage and to provide a support if any tree still required stem support with tree ties
Tools used
The main tools I used for fruit tree pruning included a sharp pair of secateurs and my preference is for Okatsune secateurs as I find these a pleasure to use as well as being sharp and strong and they are widely used by gardeners in Japan. A small hand saw like a Silky saw and I use both a Zubat with a curved blade and a Gomtaro with a straight blade. I also used telescopic loppers to work on some of the taller fruit trees from ground level. It is important to maintain any tools used for fruit tree pruning to ensure that the produce a clean cut so being able to sharpen your tools is a good skill to learn. It is also very important that all tools are cleaned in between use from tree to tree to reduce the potential for spread of pests, disease and infection and I used a spray disinfectant for this purpose.