How to Prune Apple Trees Part 2/2
Hello it’s Stephen Hayes of Fruitwise Heritage Apples again. I’m just continuing the tutorials about pruning apple trees. Come and take a look at the secateurs now and in particular, how to use some to thin out spur systems and to deal with lateral branches which are badly placed or too big.
Now, you can pay anything from about 3 pounds to about 50 pounds per pair of secateurs. I’ll use the Felco #8. They’re about 40 pounds but they are very good. I like the number eight because they have these thin low jaws, you can sneak into quite thin spaces.
And I have pruned a lot of trees with this and they were showing no signs of wear whatsoever so, probably it’s better to play a bit more for really comfortable secateurs. They’re sharper and a better maintained they are, then the less likely they are to cause arthritis of the hands if you’re looking a lot of trees and I’m pruning 800 trees and I’m pruning them three times a year, winter and spring, and summer. This winter, I’m pruning so as well I’ve probably buying better ones.
Here is a fruiting lateral which is done quite well as you can see. There are lots of buds on it, too many, in fact. And this is a good 90-degree angle to the tree. This is coming out from a medium size branch, just coming out from the main trunk then back again. If it’s tree fruits fully this year, this branch is going to pour right down very low in a bad angle and then next year, I’ll have to cut the whole thing out. I don’t want to do that. I want fruit and balance off to this. So, just drop the secateurs.
So what I’m going to do, first of all, I’m going to prune this to an outward facing branch. Now, I’m going to go along here and snip out the fruit buds which are underneath. Now, these have already fruited. In that way, it doesn’t happen to cut out. I’ll just return to the earth and that’s okay. But if these are all fruit, there are going to be too many apples on this branch. As it is, we’re going to branch in about two feet long and it has got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11 buds on each one. It’s capable potentially if using four apples. We’ll look again at the middle for summer pruning.
So, I’ve just reduce that’s right with facing and I reduced another of spurs. Here’s another spur systems. It’s a bit too thick. I’m going to take this bit out. Know the way to cut is made; it’s up against the bud as neat as can be and with the blade next to the wood.
If you look at your secateurs, you can see that the way has to be that way. If you’ve got the lower jaw of the thicker part right next to it, then it’s going to leave you with three or four millimeters. This bit being three or four millimeters thick. It has come with even three or four millimeters stab whereas if you cut clean against the wood like this, it’s going to cut it right out, again, underneath facing spur. Okay, you get the picture.
So this is how we use secateurs to remove excessive numbers of fruiting spurs.
