I am still relatively new to the gardening game (let's say 15 years in) and I have found that there never seems to be one right way to do things. As I look around, talk and read there is always an alternative bigger and better approach to take, and such is the thinking around pruning trees – how many approaches can there really be! Well in the end, as all things gardening it is a matter of trying, looking and adjusting, and so it is with my fruit trees (apples and pears mainly).
This year I got no fruit at all, the first time since I have been here! My feeling is that one of the very large winds we have been getting, blew all the flowers off and that was that for that! If it happens again next year, I will start thinking it is something else.
But let’s go with this theory about summer pruning, which is meant to slow the tree down and promote better flowering and fruiting the following season. In essence this prune is about reducing the height. This lets the tree know that it is time to slow down rather than surge ahead.
We must not forget that most of our fruit trees are not native to Australia and are more use to long, cold and ferocious winters and these conditions naturally slow the tree down. There are not many places in Australia like that, instead winters are relatively mild and short (maybe not so in Tasmania).
Summer pruning reduces the vigor, opens the canopy for light and air to get in and gets the tree to put energy into strengthening buds over chasing height.
- Pick fruit and then prune once the tree has settled
- Concentrate on the height, cut to below your stretched out arm – think about a height to easily put netting over and harvest
- Don’t worry too much about where to cut it, just down to a manageable height
- Ignore the middle of the tree– it is impossible to see what’s going on in there, so wait till winter to get in to thin it out and shape it.
I will wait a little for this current heat wave to finish but will soon be out in the orchard putting theory into practice.
Enjoy
Peter
PS for any of you still with me. I have just finished reading a John Steinbeck novel (Once there was a war). When he was about 40, he went to Europe as a war correspondent and spent time with soldiers preparing for action in the UK. While there the solders set up gardens, and one of the many observations Steinbeck made was that – ‘There is some contact with the normal about the garden, a kind of relationship with peace.’
As it was then, so it is now
Maybe I will do a specific piece on this for those that didn’t get this far. There are some very interesting views on the morale benefits of gardening and an interesting comparison about the different approaches the Americans and English had towards using vegetables. You can imagine!
Peter