Pruning your fruit trees

 

Laura Potts has kindly supplied these notes to help you keep your fruit trees healthy and productive.

Aims of pruning

• To maintain a balance between fruiting and growth
• To maintain an appropriate shape and size to tree
• To keep tree healthy as well as productive

General principles:

• Know what you’re pruning FOR: fruit, shape, growth. Know what you’re pruning TO: a growth or fruit bud, to make a spur, to create space and airiness.
• Use clean, sharp tools (learn how to sharpen blades)
• Cut cleanly on a slant, leave no snags (so cut to an outward facing bud or sideshoot)
• Cut weak growth hard, strong growth more lightly
• Keep the centre of the tree open (so you can throw your hat through!); keep the tree’s shape balanced around its centre of gravity 
• Keep growth low and horizontal
• Know your shoots: growth buds lie flat to the branch, fruit buds are fatter (and furry later in spring)

Pruning process and steps:

• Prune trained trees (fans cordons and espaliers) in summer; prune bush and pyramid shaped trees in winter
• Stand back to look at the whole tree often, as you work methodically around it
• Remove dead, diseased or damaged wood
• Remove crossing branches that might rub each other
• Aim for fruiting branches to be horizontal (so cut out any dramatic verticals – although they may bend when laden) 
• The tree should ideally have about 10 main permanent framework branches, with laterals (side branches) which produce fruit and are eventually replaced
• Cut sideshoots back by about a quarter to a third each year to make them branch to form fruiting laterals
• After about four years, these laterals should be removed in favour of new fruiting lateral shoots (this is renewal pruning)

Laura Potts January 2023