Summer Pruning Established Apples & Pears
Chris demonstrates how to keep on top of established apple and pear trees through careful pruning and maintenance during August, ensuring excellent yields of fruit for the future
Growing Apples and Pears on a system of horizontal wires in the form known as the Espalier is a really great way of getting a huge crop of fruit from limited space. I have three pear trees trained in this way against a standard six foot high garden fence, each with five tiers of branches.
The trees are now some twenty years old and crop very well but need some careful management to ensure a balance between vegetative and fruiting growth.
In contrast to bush fruit trees which are pruned during the dormant season, established espaliers require the majority of the pruning to be undertaken in summertime, the reason for this is to control growth and promote fruit bud production.
During the spring and early summer espaliers will produce lots of upright shoots of the current season’s growth, this is the growth that needs to be pruned just when the growth starts to harden up which is usually from Late July for pears and late august for apples. Don’t be tempted to prune earlier as it is very likely that the shoots will regrow from the pruning cuts, but done later the energy will go into promoting fruit buds within the spur system instead.
On each of the new upright shoots, near to where the pruning cut was made the previous season you will notice a ring of leaves, usually around three or so for pears above which leaves grow out in a normal pattern right to the top of the shoot.
The ring of leaves is known as the ‘Basal Cluster’ and the pruning cut should be made just above the first normal bud above this cluster. This ensures that fruiting spurs are kept really short and productive.
This is really important for mature espaliers as leaving too many buds from light pruning will mean very long fruit spurs will be formed and they will quickly outgrow their allotted space!
Summer pruning in this way not only tidies the growth up but ensures each of the fruiting spurs are maintained for quite a few years before you will need to rejuvenate them by cutting them away during the wintertime to promote strong vigorous growth and thus starting the whole cycle over again.
Chris Jones
Based in Shropshire Chris has many years experience both in growing projects of his own and passing on his expert outdoor knowledge to others through growing and gardening societies. Keep an eye on our blog posts and newsletters for his seasonal articles to keep you well informed on all things outdoors.
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