Planning pruning top fruit

[yummersetter]

I'm itching to start pruning as there's so much rampant growth on the unfruited apples and pears this year. I probably should have summer pruned them, but too late for that now.

Somehow, the trees look different in Winter, the bare branches and shoots lift a lot when there are no leaves and fruits and you can be misled. I'm intending to go round the lot in the next couple of weeks and photograph them and list the image numbers to the trees as a record, and my idea is to work out any obvious unwanted wood on some prints and use them as guides. In addition to the obvious pruning that's only visible when the leafy mass has gone, of course.

[Kleftiwallah]

Well, this year the branches certainly aren't bent down with the weight of fruit ! !!

Cheers, Tony.

[Feral007]

My apple trees are shocking - I don't know how I managed to get them into that shape. And no, I don't think you need pictures. I'd hate to be reported to the Prevention of Shame Society for Apple Trees!

Hope you have better luck with your pruniing Yumsetter, of course using luck rather than knowledge may have led me astray.............

[yummersetter]

The 150 trees planted 3 years back have doubled in size this year, so I might end up with more prunings than tree! Just hoping to get through them all before next summer - I don't want to be reported to the PSSAT either!

[FB.]

The 150 trees planted 3 years back have doubled in size this year

That's what plenty of rain does for fruit trees; makes 'em grow.

Y'know, due to the very rare event of plentiful summer rain in East Anglia, even some of my MM106's and some St.J.A's of neighbours actually managed to behave normally this year - with some new shoots long and thick enough to be worth pruning and a reasonable quantity of fruit worth picking!
Some of those MM106's and St.J.A's hadn't even produced a new shoot since about 2009.

Wonders will never cease!
In several weeks time I'm actually going to have to get off my lazy and do a bit of pruning.

I won't be getting rid of the '111's and '25's just yet, though.

Easy-prune fruit trees: shallow, infertile, dry soil.

Not so easy-prune fruit trees: deep, fertile, moist soil.

[yummersetter]

Who's posting using FB's computer?

We can tell it's not FB because he is almost saying that MM106 is kinda OK sometimes!