Apple and Pear Tree Pruning

And now the winter is upon us in the UK, it is an excellent time to prune Apple and Pear Trees.  They say, Apples in late November and December.   Pears in late January or early February.

It is best to pick dry days and not when there is frost on the branches.

The idea is to remove any diseased wood, crossing branches, damaged and dead branches and if need be, to thin out overcrowding, to allowing plenty of air and light, into the tree.

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November to February are the main pruning month for Apples and Pears.  It is important to have the frosts, to send the tree into dormancy above ground, thus making it safe to use secateurs, loppers and saws on the tree.

In an ideal world, your aim is to develop the structure of the tree into a nice rounded head each year, as it slowly increases in stature in the coming years.

In the first five years, ideally you want to develop the tree structure, but not let too much fruit develop, as the root system needs to be very established for the long term provision of fruit.  

Take the trunk and straight up the middle of the tree as your datum and use that throughout your pruning operation.  Anything going to the right of your datum should be growing away from that point.  Anything to the left of the datum should be going away from it the other way.

Using the datum approach, I usually move round the tree in one direction and continue in that way until I'm back at the beginning, it definitely helps when looking for potentially crossing branches and those that are heading back, towards the middle of the tree.

Whatever you do, being methodical is vital to the overall result, I have seen too many people, flitting from one side of the tree to the other, and this usually leads to missing pieces of tree that require pruning.

Any branches that have been trained wrongly, become easier to spot when you use the datum trick.

When you trim a branch, it is important to choose a growing point, or node, and to cut just above it on an angle as demonstrated in one of the accompanying pictures.

With young trees, it is unlikely that you will need the saw, as most of your pruning will be on small wood.

With older trees, it is best to have a sealant such as Prune and Seal to put on any wounds caused by loppers and saws.

As a rule of thumb, if you have needed the loppers or saw to prune it, then you will need to paint the wound with a sealant.  Anything, where secateurs have been used, the wound should be small enough not to worry, on a domestic scale.

There are growth and fruit buds on the trees and certainly within the very new growth on the tree, the growing points will all be for growth only and these unusually single shoots cover the top of the tree and all need to be reduced by two thirds, using secateurs.

The older wood is usually full of fruit bud and therefore requires little work.

I have tried to make the accompanying photographs helpful to this article.

Good luck and if you have any queries, there is always the forums to discuss them in.

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