Do you have apple trees in your garden? Fruit trees need special care to help grow more fruits. Pruning is essential for all trees as it keeps diseases at bay and promotes healthy growth. An apple tree is one of the most common trees that most gardens have. Apples come in a wide range of varieties, and you need to look after this tree properly to harvest a good amount of fruits. Early summer to mid-winter is generally the best time to harvest apples. We suggest hiring tree surgeons for the appropriate tree care in Croydon. Let’s dive deeper into the subject in this blog below.
How to Prune Apple Trees
Well, the basics of pruning apple trees are nothing different from pruning other fruit trees, But pruning apple trees requires you to consider other additional factors as well.
-
Certain varieties of apples are spur bearers, whereas some are tip bearers. Both of them require different pruning.
-
Another factor you need to keep in mind is that these trees can grow on varieties of rootstocks.
Tip Bearing vs Spur Bearing
-
Most apples are typically spur-bearers, meaning they bear fruits on a 2-year-old or older wood. You will find this wood in the short fruit-bearing form called spurs.
-
Spur-bearing ones are generally slow-growing leafy shoots and a mixed (both leaves and flowers) terminal bud.
-
Tip-bearing varieties are fewer as it bears fruit as clusters near the longer shoots’ tips. You will find considerably less spur, and they also have a greater length of bare wood between shoots and buds.
Please note that certain varieties are mixed, i.e. both spur and tip bearing.
You need to understand the type of your tree before moving ahead with pruning.
Tips for pruning spur-bearing apple trees
-
For older trees, just remove overcrowded spurs, as they will have less fruit buds.
-
You can also reduce the laterals on each branch to promote spur growth. But you can avoid pruning short laterals.
-
A 2-year-old spur is most likely to have just a couple of new laterals. You can shorten each of them to encourage healthy spur growth.
Tips for pruning tip-bearing apple trees
-
First, identify the growth of new laterals and shoots, as they must be left unpruned.
-
If the trees are mature, renewal pruning is what we recommend for the removal of older fruiting laterals.
Manor Gardens Tree Care offers a wide range of varieties of tree care services in Croydon. Book an appointment with us today, and let us help you have a healthy garden.
