Does my apple tree need summer pruning?

[BeatTheSeasons]

Here is a picture of my Tydeman's Late Orange on MM111 rootstock.

It was purchased from Bernwode and planted a few months ago, in mid to late winter. It has already put in some decent growth this year and reached 1.9m high (the post to the left of the tree in the picture is 1.5m high).

I'm planning to train my TLO into something slightly bigger than a half standard, i.e. the trunk height to reach about 1.5m. This is so that we can sit in the shade underneath the tree rather than having lots of low branches taking up all of our narrow garden, as would be the case with a bush form.

As you can see in the picture, there are several unwanted branches forming lower down, and I'm wondering if the tree is putting too much energy into those at the expense of achieving the required trunk height.

However, in my RHS book it says that to grow the tree in the form I require:

... you will need to grow on the main vertical stem for a season or two to reach the desired stem height ... Retain the sideshoots until the main stem is the correct height, then train as for a bush.

Is this really right? If so, do I eventually remove the lower branches in the summer or the winter (when I do the rest of the pruning)?

[FB.]

A young apple tree should be growing strongly. 2ft of growth per season from multiple growing points should be seen from a young half-standard tree, if it is not to runt-out.
Don't complain: good growth doesn't often happen in this area.*

Any pruning during the growing season will reduce its strength, slow its growth and encourage it to go to fruit next year. TLO has thin whippy branches which will easily become permanently droopy/bent/distorted if it fruits at a young age.

I strongly advise to leave the side branches and remove the unwanted ones next winter.
This will allow all the energy to go down into the roots when the leaves fall, to build the strong root system that will be needed for its mature years. If you take off shoots during the growing season the autumn burst of root growth may be severely impaired.
When the unwanted side branches are removed next winter, it will create a root:shoot imbalance which will give a good strong burst of growth next spring, before the summer drought hits and growth grinds to a halt by mid-summer.
Having an excess of roots:shoots (and an unpruned leader) after winter pruning tends to encourage branching - and I mean nice branching; good, strong, wide-spreading branches rather than weak, narrow angled, breakage/disease-prone branches which usually occur when a shoot is headed-back ("tipped").


*The heaviest-ever rainfall and coldest/dullest spring for this area has nullified the usual punishing summer drought, so don't let its first year of growth deceive you: it'll be reduced to a crawl when our weather pattern returns to the norm of almost nil penetrating rainfall in future summers.
My water butts have collected more water in the last six months than in the last two or three years combined: rainfall has been extreme for this area, so plants which would normally be dwarfed are currently growing normally. Never in my life have I been simply dumping water from my water butts because the soil remains moist. More normally the soil will be totally dry down to 1ft by now and I would have used up most of my water butt reserves in a few weeks time.

[FB.]

Here's a couple of pictures of what happens when:

1. The leader is retained: excellent wide branch angles will produce a beautiful tree shape when mature.

2. The leader is removed: lots of shoots compete to become the new leader, resulting in a crowded canopy with weak/narrow branch angles which will split under heavy fruit load (the strongest branch angles are between 45 and 60 degrees).

[orangepippin]

The RHS advice is good for training as a standard or half-standard (I assume this is the RHS Pruning and Training book by Brickell - an excellent guide). Remember that you don't just need height, the tree also needs to thicken the trunk in order to achieve height.

[BeatTheSeasons]

The RHS advice is good for training as a standard or half-standard (I assume this is the RHS Pruning and Training book by Brickell - an excellent guide). Remember that you don't just need height, the tree also needs to thicken the trunk in order to achieve height.

Actually it's the RHS more general fruit and veg growing book, a 10 year old edition:
RHS Fruit and Vegetable Gardening: Amazon.co.uk: Mike Pollock: Books

But it does have a decent section on tree pruning.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendaton, I've added the specialist pruning book to my wish list!

[BeatTheSeasons]

Any pruning during the growing season will reduce its strength, slow its growth and encourage it to go to fruit next year. TLO has thin whippy branches which will easily become permanently droopy/bent/distorted if it fruits at a young age.

I strongly advise to leave the side branches and remove the unwanted ones next winter.
This will allow all the energy to go down into the roots when the leaves fall, to build the strong root system that will be needed for its mature years. If you take off shoots during the growing season the autumn burst of root growth may be severely impaired.
When the unwanted side branches are removed next winter, it will create a root:shoot imbalance which will give a good strong burst of growth next spring, before the summer drought hits and growth grinds to a halt by mid-summer.
Having an excess of roots:shoots (and an unpruned leader) after winter pruning tends to encourage branching - and I mean nice branching; good, strong, wide-spreading branches rather than weak, narrow angled, breakage/disease-prone branches which usually occur when a shoot is headed-back ("tipped").

Thanks for the explanation - I wasn't really thinking about the roots!

[BeatTheSeasons]

A couple more questions:

1. Should I clear a larger area of competing grass? The diameter of the bare earth circle at the base is about 60cm (it looks a bit smaller on the picture because the grass has got long).

2. When I come to prune, do you have any recommendations for the best pruning secateurs? I bought some from B&Q that cost about £20 (trying to get decent ones) but I didn't think it cut very cleanly on my Spartan and Winter Gem trees down the allotment.

Thanks

[FB.]

A couple more questions:

1. Should I clear a larger area of competing grass? The diameter of the bare earth circle at the base is about 60cm (it looks a bit smaller on the picture because the grass has got long).

2. When I come to prune, do you have any recommendations for the best pruning secateurs? I bought some from B&Q that cost about £20 (trying to get decent ones) but I didn't think it cut very cleanly on my Spartan and Winter Gem trees down the allotment.

Thanks

1.
No. Don't take up the grass. If it is growing well already, it clearly doesn't need any more help. MM111 is strong, very self-sufficient (not needing much human intervention) and is perfectly capable of growing well in total grass cover, even if planted as a one-year maiden (although one-year-olds may need occasional watering during the first year if it is a dry season). M25 is also very capable of growing with intense competition.
Your TLO's MM111 roots will be streaking out in all directions - probably several roots of 2ft length and a quarter inch thickness by now, just an inch or two below the surface (just under the grass roots). If you dig up the grass now, you'll damage the TLO's roots which could set it back severely, or even allow fungal diseases (such as phytophthora) to start attacking and rotting the damaged roots.
Also, in this area, the dry summers are a problem. Grass seems to keep the ground damper, therefore fruit trees tend to do better in grass. My pears (on Quince A) failed to thrive in clear ground for years, but immediately perked-up when planted in grass. This, of course, is contrary to popular wisdom, but most people don't live in an area with shallow, fast-drying, sandy/gravelly/chalky soil and with less rainfall than some parts of the Middle East!
Vigorous-rooted trees planted in grass produce the best quality fruits. In fact, my head-to-head trials now seem to be suggesting that the more vigorous the rootstock, the better the quality of the fruit - especially bitter pit (or rather M25-rootstock seems to give the tree resistance to bitter pit, whereas weaker rootstocks seem more prone). This is hardly surprising given that the stronger the roots, the better able to supply all the plants needs. More dwarf roots - even in excellent soil - seem sometimes to be unable to supply enough nutrients to the fruit, resulting in more fruit disorders.

2.
My "best" secateurs are a rusty old unbranded set which I found down the back of a coal bunker when I moved house a few years ago - but they're sharp and cut nicely.
Have you tried cutting with different parts of the blade? - I find that the tip of the blade is best for small shoots, while the power of the middle of the blade is needed for 2-3yr old shoots. I tend to find that curved overlapping blades cut better than straight blades.
But I am not particularly fussy about secateurs: a healthy, vigorous apple tree will quickly heal-over a slightly rough pruning cut - or you can use a stanley knife or grafting knife to tidy up a bad cut.