Gadenin日本語Get the appLearn to tell a spur from a shoot before you cut
Most apples carry their fruit on spurs: short, stubby, wrinkled side shoots, often branched like a little antler, that lengthen by less than half an inch a year. A spur system takes three or four years to build and then crops for a decade or more. Cut one off and you have thrown away four years of the tree's work.
In winter you can tell fruit buds from growth buds by eye. Fruit buds are fat, rounded and covered in fine gray down, and they sit on the ends of spurs. Growth buds are small, pointed and pressed flat against the shoot. Run your thumb along a branch and the fat ones stand out. Everything you do in a winter prune should be checked against that: am I removing wood, or am I removing next season's crop?
A minority of varieties are tip bearers, carrying fruit at the ends of the previous year's shoots rather than on spurs. On those, shortening every shoot tip, which is exactly what a beginner does, removes the entire crop. If your tree flowers only at the outer ends of long, whippy shoots, prune it by thinning whole branches out rather than by shortening tips.
| What you see | What it is | Winter action |
|---|---|---|
| Short knobbly stub with a fat downy bud | Fruiting spur | Leave it completely alone |
| Thin one-year shoot, pointed buds | Growth shoot | Shorten or remove as needed |
| Vertical shoot, straight, over 2 ft (60 cm) | Water shoot | Remove at its base |
| Fat bud at the tip of a one-year shoot | Tip-bearing fruit bud | Do not shorten that shoot |
| Crowded cluster of old spurs, small fruit | Overgrown spur system | Thin the spurs, do not remove the branch |
Prune in the dormant season
The main structural prune is done in winter, when the tree is leafless and dormant and you can actually see what you are doing. Choose a dry spell, and avoid pruning in hard frost or immediately before it, because frozen tissue at a fresh cut dies back further than you intended.
Winter pruning is invigorating. The roots stay the same size while the top gets smaller, so the tree responds in spring by pushing hard growth near the cuts. That is useful in a young tree you are still shaping and a nuisance in a mature tree you only want to keep in bounds.
Summer pruning is the opposite: cutting back the current season's side shoots in late summer, once the wood at the base has stiffened, removes leaf area and calms the tree down. Restricted forms such as cordons and espaliers are largely summer pruned for that reason. On a free-standing tree, use summer pruning to control an over-vigorous tree and to let light onto coloring fruit.
Never remove more than about a quarter of the canopy in a single winter. Hard cutting on a mature tree brings up a forest of water shoots the following summer, and you spend the next three years undoing one afternoon's work.
The framework you are aiming for
Whatever the form, the goal is the same: light and air into every part of the tree, and no branch shading another. Apples color and sweeten in direct sun, and scab thrives in leaves that stay wet, so an open framework is a disease measure as much as a fruiting one.
An open-center or goblet tree has three to five main limbs spreading outwards from a short trunk with the middle kept clear, which suits a bush tree on a semi-dwarf or vigorous rootstock. A central-leader tree keeps one vertical trunk with tiers of side branches, shortest at the top so the lower tiers are not shaded, and suits dwarf trees and small gardens.
Branch angle matters more than most people expect. A limb leaving the trunk at a wide angle, roughly 45 to 60 degrees from vertical, is strong and fruits early. A narrow, upright fork traps bark between the two limbs, stays weak, and splits out under a heavy crop. On a young tree, spread narrow branches with a spacer or a weight instead of pruning them; a branch pulled towards horizontal stops running and starts making fruit buds.
The order of cuts
Work through the tree in a fixed order and stand back frequently. Most of the volume you remove will come from the first three steps, and on many neglected trees you can stop there for the first year.
- Dead, damaged and diseased first Take out anything broken, dead or showing sunken cankered bark, cutting back into clean wood. This is free: it costs no fruit and it removes disease sources. Do it before you make any decisions about shape.
- Crossing and rubbing branches Where two branches touch, the bark wears through and becomes an entry point for canker. Remove the weaker or worse-placed of the two entirely rather than shortening both.
- Anything growing into the middle Remove branches heading back towards the center of the tree or straight downwards. They will always be shaded, they will never ripen good fruit, and they block the light reaching the branches that would.
- Water shoots and suckers Cut vertical whips off flush at their base, and pull suckers from below the graft union off with a downward tug rather than cutting them, which only makes them branch.
- Then thin the remaining branches Aim for space between the main limbs and the shoots on them. A common target is enough room to pass a hand between branches, and light reaching all the way down through the tree in leaf.
- Cut to a bud or a branch, never to a stub Finish each cut just outside the swollen collar where a branch meets its parent, or a quarter inch above an outward-facing bud on a slight slope. A stub left behind cannot heal over and rots inwards.
Renewing tired spurs, and rescuing a neglected tree
Spur systems do not last forever. After many years they branch into a congested knot carrying a dozen weak buds, and the fruit from them is small and poorly colored. Thin those knots in winter, cutting away the oldest and weakest spurs and leaving the strongest three or four with room around them. The fruit that follows will be noticeably larger.
A tree that has not been touched for years should be brought back over three winters, not one. In the first winter take out the dead wood and one or two of the worst-placed large limbs. In the second, thin the remaining framework and reduce the height. In the third, tidy the spur systems. Spreading it out avoids the water-shoot response and lets the tree keep cropping while you work.
Reducing height is the one job people do worst. Rather than cutting the leaders straight across at the height you want, follow each tall branch down to a well-placed side branch growing outwards and cut back to that. The side branch takes over as the new end of the limb, the tree keeps a natural shape, and you avoid the brush of vertical regrowth that a flat cut produces.
| Problem | Cause | Correction |
|---|---|---|
| Vigorous growth, almost no fruit | Over-pruning, or too much nitrogen | Prune far less, tie branches down towards horizontal |
| Forest of vertical water shoots | Too much removed in one winter | Remove at the base over two seasons; do not shorten them |
| Small, pale, poorly colored apples | Too dense; interior shaded | Thin branches for light, thin congested spur systems |
| Fruit only on the outside of the canopy | Interior shaded out for years | Open the center gradually over three winters |
| Limb split under a crop | Narrow, weak branch fork | Remove the split limb; spread young branches wide in future |
Keeping a pruning record
Photograph the whole tree from the same spot before and after every winter prune, and note which large limbs you removed and roughly how much of the canopy went. Next winter that photograph tells you whether the tree responded with sensible growth or with water shoots, which is the only honest measure of whether you cut the right amount. Also note where you found canker or rubbed bark, because those spots recur and going straight to them next winter turns a whole-tree survey into a two-minute check.