Will I kill my apple tree if I prune it now?

[Gryfon]

Completely forgot over the winter and now we're getting back out into the garden I've just noticed how much it's grown! Not sure what kind of apple tree it is but we think it may be a cooker as it gives you huge bright red apples in the autumn which I've only used for cooking.

The main problem are the 2 or 3' branches sticking straight up which none of us can reach. You can sort of see it in my blog but I'll go and take a better picture.

[Capsid]

I pruned my tree 2 weekends back. Now is the time to do it before the buds start to break.

I managed to do mine with my Xmas pressy!



The lopper sits on the end of an extendable pole which I also use to attach the apple picker. Well worth the investment I think.

[Gryfon]

Thanks! My parents have those so I think a trip down to their house is in order

Here's a photo of it. You can see it's shot up a lot in the middle! Also I tend to end up with so many apples that I never get around to using them all so I'm not going to complain about a slightly smaller stock!

[Alison]

Did mine a couple of weekends ago, general advice is to do them before the end of Feb so I think you're just OK! Either way, you won't kill it even if you are a bit late, just maybe reduce it's fruiting this year.

[Gryfon]

Great thanks Reduced fruiting is fine, just didn't want to find that I prune it now and it dies on me!

[FB.]

Most people worry about killing their apple tree with pruning. Relax. It's not as easy as to kill one -as a result of pruning- as you might think.
While they are dormant, young trees can tolerate extreme pruning - so long as the roots remain, the rootstock will fight its way back!
With older trees, they'll tolerate loss of a quarter of their mass.

When the trees are growing, pruning anything other than this seasons growth can badly stress them.

In once tried an experiment with a Howgate Wonder on MM106 rootstock.
The "bush" was about 7ft high and 5ft spread. Age was about 5 years.
In mid-summer, while it was in full leaf (the most streesful time to prune them), I cut the whole tree down to just the trunk and short primary branches - about 3ft high. Not one leaf remained.
After a few weeks, the end of each primary branch opened 2-3 buds and it began to re-grow. It managed to re-grow about a dozen pencil-sized branches before the end of the season.

If I had pruned it in winter, the tree would have grown back much more vigorously, since from late autumn to early spring, most of the trees energy is underground, in the roots.
Thr roots grow when there are no leaves. Although your apple tree may look dormant, it will be growing new roots at this time of year, ready to power the growth during the summer. Apples grow new shoots in summer and new roots in winter. They transfer most of their energy to the parts that they are growing.

For that reason, many plants establish better if planted while the leaves are still on the tree in very late summer - just as they are about to withdraw the nutrients form the leaves and start using the nutrients for growing new roots in the autumn.

Buying container-grown "clearance" fruit trees at the end of the summer may well lead to the best establishment of a new tree.
I would buy such trees, carefully untangle any coiled roots, then knock half the compost off the rootball to turn them into "semi-bare-root".
Spread out the roots into a generous hole, filled with 50/50 topsoil and compost and the tree will establish very quickly; it'll have the whole autumn and spring to get some strong roots growing.
If using bare-root trees, planted in winter, they lose half their roots when dug up and only have the spring to re-grown them. Bare-root trees can be slow to establish for that reason.

[Gryfon]

Thanks for that. Won't be so drastic on it then as it's a fairly old tree. We've been here 5 years and it was an old tree then. Think I'll go and find the long choppers tomorrow

[FB.]

Ah! I can see your picture now.
Someone has let the top-centre of the tree get out of hand.

Although I am not a professional apple grower and I'm only seeing a picture from one angle, if that was my tree, I would completely remove all the upright growth in the top-centre, followed by (in August) cutting back hard any replacement upright branches that have grown.