Gadenin日本語Get the appThe rule that governs everything: tip bearing
Quince carries its flowers, and therefore its fruit, at the ends of the shoots that grew last season. The flower is terminal, sitting at the tip of a short leafy shoot that pushes out in spring from the end of last year's wood. This is completely unlike an apple, which fruits on old stubby spurs and can be shortened back hard year after year without losing a crop.
The practical consequence is blunt. If you go over the tree shortening every shoot, which is what most people mean by tidying a fruit tree, you cut off every flower bud it made and get no fruit. A quince that has been sheared into a neat ball produces a dense outer shell of leafy growth, no blossom to speak of, and the owner concludes the tree is barren.
So the working method is to remove whole branches at their origin rather than shortening the ends of many. Take out what is crossing, dead, diseased or crowding the middle, cutting back to a main limb or to the trunk, and leave the remaining shoot tips untouched. Removing one branch entirely costs you the fruit on that branch and nothing more; tipping fifty shoots costs you the whole crop.
| Cut | Effect on this year's crop | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Shortening last year's shoots | Removes the flower buds at every tip | Avoid |
| Removing a whole crossing branch | Loses only that branch's fruit | Correct |
| Taking out dead or blighted wood | None | Always do it |
| Thinning crowded shoots at the base | Slight loss, better light and air | Correct |
| Hard renovation of an old tree | No crop for two to three years | Only on a neglected tree, over several winters |
| Removing suckers from the base | None | Always do it |
When to make the cuts
The main pruning is done in winter while the tree is dormant and leafless, once the hardest frosts have passed and before the buds begin to swell. The structure is visible then, and you can see exactly which branches cross and where the center has filled in.
There is one exception. Fireblight and dieback are best cut out the moment you see them, in summer, when the blackened tip is obvious against green leaves. Waiting until winter lets the infection run further down the branch. Cut at least twelve inches (30 cm) below the lowest visible discoloration into clean wood, and clean the blade between every cut with alcohol or a household disinfectant.
Do not prune during wet weather in either season. Open cuts and wet bark are how the main diseases of quince get in, and choosing a dry spell is free protection.
Shaping a young tree, then leaving it alone
The only period that needs real shaping is the first three or four winters, and even then the work is light. What you are building is an open, low, goblet-shaped head on a short trunk of two to three feet (60-90 cm), with four or five main limbs spaced evenly around it and an empty middle. Quince naturally grows crooked and multi-stemmed, and fighting that produces an ugly tree; guide it rather than force it.
- First winter after planting Choose four or five well-spaced shoots to become the main limbs, at wide angles to the trunk. Remove anything below them and anything growing straight up through the middle. Do not shorten the shoots you are keeping.
- Second and third winters Remove any new shoot heading into the center, any that crosses and rubs another, and any that grows downward. Take each one right back to its point of origin. Leave every remaining tip intact.
- From the fourth winter on Walk round the tree and take out only the four D's: dead, damaged, diseased and duplicated wood. In most years that is fifteen minutes of work and a small pile of brush.
- Every year, at the base Rub or pull off suckers coming from the roots and the lower trunk while they are still soft and green. Cutting a hardened sucker leaves a stub that comes back as three.
- Every year, in the middle Stand where the sun will be and look up through the head. If you cannot see sky through it, remove one or two whole branches rather than trimming many. Light in the center is what ripens the fruit and keeps blight down.
Renovating a tree that has been left or shorn
An old quince that has never been pruned becomes a thicket of thin crossing wood with all the fruit on the outside, out of reach. One that has been repeatedly shorn is a dense green ball with almost no blossom. Both are recoverable, but only slowly, and both need the same discipline: never take more than a quarter of the live wood in one winter.
Work over three winters. In the first, take out everything dead, broken and obviously crossing, and open one clear window into the center. In the second, remove one or two of the oldest, tallest limbs entirely, back to a lower branch, to bring the height down. In the third, thin what has regrown and settle on the permanent framework. Expect a poor crop through the renovation and a proper one in the fourth year.
Hard cutting brings up a mass of vertical watershoots the following summer. Rub most of them off while they are soft, keeping only the few that fill a genuine gap in the framework, and remember that those shoots will not carry fruit until the season after next.
Note the date you pruned, roughly how much you took, and what the following summer's shoots measured. If most extension growth is over two feet (60 cm) the next year, you cut too hard or the tree is being fed too well, and the crop will be down for a season.