Gadenin日本語Get the appLate winter, while the tree is bare
This is the only season with structural work in it, and even then there is not much. Once the hardest frosts have passed and before the buds swell, walk round the tree and remove what is dead, damaged, diseased or duplicated, cutting whole branches back to the collar rather than shortening many shoots. Remember that the flowers sit on short spurs on two year old and older wood, so shearing the outside of the head costs you flowers for years.
Take the chance to lift one or two of the lowest branches if the trunk is still hidden. This is the season when the flaking bark is at its most visible and it is easy to see which branch is in the way. Cut at the collar, leave no stubs, and do not paint the wounds.
Clear the ground while you are there. Rake off any leaf litter left from autumn, pull off any mummified fruit still hanging in the branches and take both away from the tree. Then renew the mulch, two to three inches (5-8 cm) deep out to the branch tips with a clear collar four inches (10 cm) around the trunk, and check that stake ties have not begun to bite in.
Spring, from bud break to fruit set
The leaves come first, often with a bronze flush, and the single pink flowers open with or just after them, later than apple and pear, which is why the blossom usually escapes the frosts that catch those. Note the date the first flower opens. Over a few years that one line in your records becomes the best predictor you have of your own picking date, because the gap between flowering and ripeness is remarkably stable on a given site.
Do not spray anything while the tree is in flower. If your soil is genuinely thin or sandy, this is the single point in the year for a light dressing of balanced fertilizer over the root area, watered in. On ordinary soil with an annual mulch, feed nothing at all; overfeeding produces soft growth that does not flower and is the tissue fireblight enters.
From petal fall onward, walk the tree once a week in warm humid weather and look along the shoot tips. A tip that wilts, hooks over and blackens is fireblight and must be cut out that day, eighteen inches (45 cm) below the lowest discoloration, with the blade disinfected between every cut. This weekly walk is the most valuable five minutes in the whole year.
| Season | Main job | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Late winter | Light structural pruning, rake litter, mulch | Dead wood, hanging mummies, ties cutting in |
| Early spring | Feed once only on thin soil | Buds swelling; stake still sound |
| Flowering | Record the date, do not spray | Frost on open flowers; bees working the tree |
| Early summer | Let the natural drop finish, then thin | Blackened hooked shoot tips; aphids on soft tips |
| Midsummer | Deep soak weekly, 1 in (25 mm) | Fruit stalled small; inner leaves yellowing |
| Late summer | Stop feeding; check fruit clear of branches | Rubbing fruit; first color change |
| Autumn | Pick as fruit turns even waxy yellow | Windfalls onto hard surfaces; bruising while picking |
| Late autumn | Rake leaves, clear fallen fruit | Rot on the ground; fruit left hanging |
Summer, the season that makes the crop
Early summer brings the natural drop, when the tree sheds the fruitlets it cannot carry. It looks alarming and needs no response. Once it has stopped, thin by hand to one fruit per cluster and no more than one fruit for every twelve to eighteen inches (30-45 cm) of branch, twisting each unwanted fruitlet off rather than pulling. On a mature garden tree the target is twenty to fifty fruit in total, which is more than any household will get through.
Thinning here is about weight as much as size. Each fruit finishes at twelve ounces to two pounds (350-900 g), and a limb carrying a dozen of them is holding twenty pounds (9 kg) at its far end, which is how branches tear out in an autumn gale. Take the chance to remove any fruit resting against a branch or against another fruit, since a rubbed skin is where rot gets in.
From then until the fruit stops swelling, water is the entire job. An established tree wants one inch (25 mm) a week counting rain, given as a single slow soak of ten to fifteen gallons (40-55 L) over the whole root spread rather than a daily sprinkle. Stop all feeding by midsummer, because late nitrogen makes growth that neither hardens before winter nor carries flowers.
Autumn, picking and closing the year
Chinese quince comes off last of everything, well after the apples are in. Wait until the skin has turned from green through lemon to an even deep waxy yellow, the surface feels faintly greasy, and the scent carries several feet from the tree. The fruit stays rock hard when it is ripe, so do not wait for any give, and do not expect to eat it raw; the crop goes into steeping, syrup, jelly or paste.
Pick on a dry day, one fruit at a time, taking the whole weight in your hand before you twist upward so the spur is not torn off with the fruit. Work from a ladder rather than a long-handled picker, which cannot hold the weight. Lay each fruit in a single cloth-lined layer, not touching, and never tip a crate. Anything split, bruised or stalkless goes to the kitchen within days rather than into store.
Then close the year down. Store sound fruit in a single layer somewhere cool, dark and airy at 34 to 45F (1-7C), and store it alone, because the perfume moves into apples, pears, butter, cheese and eggs kept nearby. Rake up every fallen leaf, collect any windfalls and pull off any mummified fruit left hanging. Leave the trunk entirely alone through winter: no wrapping, no painting, no scrubbing, no peeling of loose flakes. The bark is doing the one job you planted the tree for.
- Test one fruit before you start Cut a single fruit open. Dark brown seeds mean ripe; pale or fawn seeds mean it needs longer on the tree. One fruit settles a question that color alone will not.
- Pick over two or three visits The crop does not color evenly, particularly on a tree with a shaded side. Take the yellow ones and come back in a week or so, over roughly a two to three week window.
- Clear hard surfaces underneath Before the drop begins, move pots, furniture, cold frames and anything parked from under the canopy. A two pound fruit falling ten feet damages what it lands on as well as itself.
- Process the marked fruit first Bruised fruit browns from the injury and will not keep. Slice it with sugar or honey for syrup, or cook it down for jelly, within a few days of picking.
- Weigh and record the crop Note the picking dates, the number of fruit and the total weight per tree next to the flowering date from spring. This is the record that makes next year's timing easy.
- Clear the ground before winter Rake and remove every fallen leaf, pick up windfalls and take off hanging mummies. It is the last job of the year and the first defense for the next one.
One page a year per tree is enough: flowering date, date of the natural drop, number of fruit left after thinning, any fireblight and where it was, picking dates, total weight, and the trunk diameter at knee height. The trunk measurement is the one people forget, and it is the line that tells you when to expect the bark to start flaking properly.