How to prune your apple tree.
Getting the most out of your apple tree will depend on how well you prune the tree.
Apple trees benefit hugely from a good prune. The aim is to concentrate all the food and energy available, into producing blossoms and fruit. If you don’t prune your apple tree you will end up with an excessively large tree producing small fruit so high up, you’ll need a helicopter to harvest them!
Start the prune with a good clean-up of dead, diseased, or damaged limbs as well as any branches that are rubbing or crossing each other. Remove any downward-facing branches, and shorten last year’s growth by about ¼ just above an outward-facing bud.
It’s important to know where your tree fruits from, the tip or spurs, or you could remove all the fruiting buds for next season.
The common varieties like Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith fruit from the tips so just remove the ends of the branches to encourage more tips.
Spur-bearing trees are those where the fruit grows on short stubby thorn-like shoots on older wood. Golden Delicious and Red Delicious are both spur-fruiting trees. These trees can be pruned harder back as they fruit throughout the tree on older wood.
Allow plenty of light to get into your tree to ripen the fruit and keep on top of the size of the tree so you can reach the fruit.
If you are trying to tame an unruly apple tree then remember it’s part of the rose family so they can cope with a brutal prune if its necessary.