Logo

Why Apple Trees Need a Helping Hand

An apple tree left to its own devices will still crop, but it will gradually turn into a dense thicket of tangled wood. The centre becomes crowded, sunlight only reaches the outer canopy, and the fruit you do get is small, poorly coloured and prone to scab and canker. Pruning is simply the art of steering the tree's energy where you want it: into strong, well-spaced branches that ripen fruit in good light and carry the weight without snapping.

The good news is that apples are forgiving. Get the broad principles right and your tree will reward you within a season or two with larger, sweeter fruit and a shape you can actually reach from a set of steps. The two key moments in the calendar are midwinter for structural work and high summer for taming vigour.

Winter Pruning: The Structural Overhaul

The main pruning window runs from late November to late February, while the tree is fully dormant. Avoid working in hard frost, when wood is brittle and snap cuts heal poorly, and leave it alone if rain is forecast for the next day or two. Choose a dry, still morning if you can.

Your first job is not to cut anything at all. Walk round the tree two or three times and look at it properly. You are hunting for three categories of wood:

• Crossing and rubbing branches — where two limbs chafe against one another, the bark is wounded, and that wound is an open door for canker. Remove the weaker of the pair, cutting back to a well-placed side shoot or the branch it grows from.
• Dead, diseased and damaged wood — cut back to clean, pale, healthy timber. Cankered wood shows sunken, cracked bark and should be removed well below the affected area, sterilising your secateurs between cuts with methylated spirits.
• Competing leaders and steeply upright shoots — these "watershoots" shoot straight up and produce little fruit. Rub out small ones by hand; saw off larger ones flush with the branch.

As a rule of thumb, take out no more than a quarter of the canopy in any one winter. Heavy renovation is best spread over two or three seasons, otherwise the tree responds with a forest of vigorous regrowth that undoes your good work.

Keeping the Centre Open: The Goblet Principle

The traditional British open-centre, or goblet, shape is still the best design for a garden apple. Picture a wine glass: a short trunk, then four to six main branches fanning outwards and upwards, with a hollow middle. Light pours into that hollow and air moves freely through it, which is exactly what you want in our damp climate.

Stand back and imagine a blackbird dropping through the centre of the tree from above. It should fall clean through to the grass without touching a branch. If it would have to dodge, you have work to do.

When you shorten a branch, always cut to an outward-facing bud or a side shoot heading away from the centre. This directs new growth outwards rather than back into the middle. Make the cut about a quarter of an inch above the bud, sloping gently away from it so rainwater runs off. For larger limbs, use the three-cut method to avoid tearing bark: an undercut, a top cut slightly further out, then a final clean cut at the branch collar — the slight swelling where branch meets trunk, which you should leave intact.

Summer Pruning: Taming the Growth

Here is where many growers miss a trick. Winter pruning encourages growth; summer pruning restrains it and pushes the tree into forming fruiting spurs instead. On trained forms — cordons, espaliers, fans and stepovers — summer pruning is essential and is done in late July and August, once the current season's shoots have firmed up at the base but are still soft at the tip.

Shorten this year's side shoots to about four to six leaves above the basal cluster, cutting back to a bud. Leave the leader alone unless it has overshot its allotted space, in which case shorten it to three leaves. Any secondary shoots that break away afterwards can be pinched out in September.

On free-standing bush and standard trees you can be lighter-handed, but a tidy-up in August is still worthwhile. It lets more light onto the fruit, improves colour and reduces the shoot growth you would otherwise have to hack back in winter.

Tools, Cuts and Aftercare

Sharp tools make clean cuts, and clean cuts heal. A decent pair of bypass secateurs, a pair of long-handled loppers and a pruning saw will cover almost every garden tree. Bypass pruners cut like scissors and bruise far less than anvil types.

• Cut at a slight angle, never straight across, so water runs off the wound.
• Do not leave stubs — they die back and invite disease — but do not cut flush into the trunk either.
• Wounds under an inch across need no treatment. Larger cuts can be left to callus naturally; modern advice is to skip the old-fashioned tar-based paints.
• Clear all prunings from the ground, especially any showing canker, and bin or burn them rather than composting.

Feed and mulch in early spring with well-rotted manure or garden compost, keeping it clear of the trunk, and the tree will have everything it needs to seal its own wounds.

The Reward, Year After Year

Pruning is really a conversation with your tree, and the first year is the hardest because you can see so much that needs doing. Resist the urge to do it all at once. Take out the worst offenders, open the centre, and let the tree tell you how it responds.

By the third winter you will know its habits — where it fruits, which branches are too pushy, which corner stays stubbornly shaded. A well-pruned apple tree on a Yorkshire or Devon smallholding is a generous thing: easier to pick, heavier cropping, and far less troubled by the scab and canker that thrive in still, crowded wood. Spend an hour with the saw and secateurs each winter, a morning with the shears each summer, and you will be eating your own apples from a tree that looks as good as it crops.