Pruning - cordons

Pruning time again, starting with the cordons. Each year I mean to do a proper 'before and after', but usually end up doing it on the spur of a spare moment, and forget. Not great photos, but enough to show the principles of spur pruning. Basically the aim is to take off virtually all the extension growth of the previous year, by which I mean all long shoots. Most of these will need taking off either where they spring from the main stem, or just above the nearest fruiting/flowering bud (which are always a little plumper than those destined to go on to make just leaves.

The photos and details show just how much growth needs removing. If you look carefully at the second closeup, you will see that I have only left two short, stubby, knobbly little branches (spurs), one each on the right and the left. These are fruiting spurs, which will hopefully flower and produce fruit. All other growth is removed cleanly, flush to the stem with a saw (a fairly fine ordinary one, much to the annoyance of my husband).

The only time I leave any extension growth is where it springs from a 'knobbly' wood that looks like it will produce buds directly in the future, even if it currently only has a current shoot with a leaf bud. I usual prune to 2-3 buds beyond the thickened, wrinkled bit. Hopefully next year fruit buds will appear directly from the base, and the new spur can be pruned to a fruiting bud as usual. Cutting directly into this basal proto-spur before it has produced a fruit bud tends to make it produce more vegetative growth.

Apple cordons

I think I'm close to admitting defeat on some of my apple cordons. All of my pear cordons are easy to prune and more or less prolific, but some of my apples are really a waste of space. I was advised that M26 is the best rootstock for apples, but I think it is far to vigorous, M27 is a much better stock for supported forms. M26 is a pretty useless stock all round, as it's far to weak and spindly to use as a half-standard form, it needs permanent staking and the branches simply can't support and weight of fruit and are prone to breaking.

Some varieties of apple are fine on cordons, ones that spur freely with compact growth (Sunset is the best in this respect). Most apples are too vigorous and the pruning required to keep a trained form manageable just encourages yet more top growth. With the exception of just a few, most apples fare best with only light pruning to shape.

The more vigorous of my M26 cordons make shoots growth in excess of 3 feet which is just a bit too thick to prune with secateurs; using a lopper results in ugly wounds, and personally I dislike having to resort to a pruning saw. It's a sign that something isn't working.

I will give them one last chance and ringbark the worst offenders next Spring, but I will also graft up some M27 versions of these trees and either make a new cordon, or grow them as bushes now that I have some more space (or both). If ring-barking doesn't work, I think I'll take them out and plant pears in their place.

Summer pruning!

Made a start on so-called summer pruning, starting with Winter Nellis. I like to prune extension growth away at this time of year as it lets more sunlight in and means fewer leaves end up falling around the trees. Summer pruning should never be done until terminal buds have formed, signalling extension growth is finished for the year, so can be pruned back to the fruiting spurs, apart from long growth required for training in or as graft wood next year. The prunings will go straight on the bonfire.

Pears: Summer pruning

Before and after pruning shots of Winter Nelis and Glou Morceau. Winter Nelis has a particularly effusive, weeping habit which tends to shade the fruit a lot, although this doesn't seem to affect fruit quality that much. However, it looks untidy and pruning the excess growth now also means fewer leaves to sweep up later on. It will also allow light in to help ripen the Glou Morceau fruits, which need all the warmth and light they can get. 

Pruning revealed rather more Winter Nelis fruits than I'd been expecting. This variety is inclined to produce a lot of spurs close together, and my usual approach is to prune back to just one rather than allow a cluster of spurs to develop.

Summer pruning/deleafing

I meant to take a 'before' photo, but I got carried away with opening up some light and air into the Comice/Concorde/Conference/Beth row of cordons and the russet apple cordons. All tall extension growth not wanted for tying in (i.e. none now that the frame is complete) has been taken back to about 6-9 inches. This is purely to allow light in to ripen the fruit and air to circulate. I never cut back too radically at this stage as if the weather continues to be mild and wet, the pruned wood will sprout again, even if a terminal bud has formed. I will prune again in September when I'm sure there won't be regrowth.

Cordons: summer

The pear cordons are heavy with fruit, and beginning to lose their shape with an excess of long shoots. Although next years fruiting spurs have formed, I will wait until at least August before doing any summer pruning, although I will remove shoots/leaves where fruit is being unduly shaded. Using fruit to divide vegetable plots has worked very well so far, with neither type of crop appearing unduly compromised by competition with the other.

Red Ellison's Orange: deleafing

It's worth just inspecting fruit to check that they are not too over-shaded by new extension growth, as fruit in full sun will be better coloured, better-ripened and ultimately nicer in flavour. I've removed the extension shoots and the leaves from the fruiting spur too. Hopefully Red Ellison's will live up to it's name and be well-coloured with full exposure to the sun.

St Edmund's pippin: set

A good set on St Edmund's, several spurs with nice healthy fruitlets. Having read up on this variety and found it described as a 'tip and spur bearer' in a number of sources, I decided to grow it as a cordon. My experience has been that it's entirely a tip bearer so far. However, as it's fairly biennial, I think I might get away with pruning hard every other year, then leaving the fruit to develop on the tips of the previous year's growth.

Red Comice - espalier

Having removed the top tier of this espalier, I'm really pleased to see strong extension growth in just about the right place to establish another tier to the espalier. I love the colour of this variety's foliage, almost a coral red maturing to bronze. It's particularly vibrant with the other colours in the front garden (Red shrub roses, valerian and Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecracker'. Cropping hasn't been terribly good so far, but I think it will improve with time.

Plum Pruning experiment

An experiment. I've never pruned a plum before June (not counting the suckers I removed from my land-lady's Victoria whilst it was dormant, which went on to develop silver leaf as a result, hence my caution). Sources seem to differ on when safe pruning can be done. Some say it is fine as soon as the plant is in vigourous growth (April); others to delay until June just to be on the safe side.

However, this Denniston's Superb has never lived up to its name. It took years to flower at all, and now only produces about 10% of the blossom I'd expect (making the Coe's Golden Drop look generous) and sets even less.

Festooning the branches has helped, and most of the fruit that sets is usually to be found on a bent branch. I usually summer prune, but still there is too much unproductive growth. This year I have removed all extension growth back to either a flowering spur, or 'knobbly' wood that looks like it might spur if it ever ceases to sulk. We shall see.

I suspect the real problem is that the soil here is unsuitable for plums. We have a very shallow layer of topsoil, on a few inches of clay which sits on water-logged gravel, the water table being only a couple of feet from the surface at times. I suspect there is a lot of nutrient leaching. Even the local blackthorn bushes set crops of sloes very rarely. 

Pruning example: pear

Not a classic time to prune I know, but I do find there is always the odd bit of winter pruning that was missed.

Here the there is a fruiting spur on the bottom left that is being dominated by some more vigourous extension growth above. This will later shade the developing fruit, plus I find that pruning back to a fruiting spur encourages more spurring in the basal area below. (variety Winter Nelis)