Well after a long and busy season, I've finally got round to starting this blogging project.
Yesterday saw the start of winter with -7 C being recorded at night. The ground is now constantly
too wet to do the final few grass cuts (these can wait till 2010!).
The days work today included apple tree
pruning, with plum tree's having to wait until spring (due to silver leaf etc.) Some of the apple tree's around here are part of an old orchard
so the names of the varieties have been forgotten.
I managed to prune just 6 apple trees today, they are all in garden's I maintain regularly, so I've had my eye on them for a while.
When I first started learning about horticulture, the stuff I read about pruning just baffled me. You could get really bogged down in technical details
only to find conflicting ideas from another source.
I tried to find some simple rules to guide me through pruning.
Mostly pruning is done for these reasons:
- To prolong the life of a tree/shrub
- To encourage flowering or fruiting
- To encourage leafy or bushy growth
- For Safety reasons
- To help with disease resistance
- To maintain the shape
- To reduce the height
There's probably a few more like;
- Wanting to try out new hedge trimmer
- Deer visited last night and "pruned" every plant in the garden
I'm sure if there's any more you'll let me know!!!
I try and stick to some simple rules when pruning most things
- First take out anything diseased
- Anything dead
- Anything crossing over or touching or rubbing
- Try and keep an open shape (this usually means thinning out the centre or anything growing inwards)
- Then when all this is done, you can walk around the tree and do a last bit of tweaking to get a balanced shape
When pruning apple trees it also helps me if I imagine a giant opened hand holding apples. This sounds a bit unusual, but it's really easy to do and it really does help.
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