I was orchard pruning recently for one of my neighbours and here are some of the photos. The trees are overly shaded to the south by some big Cupressus Leylandii trees making the situation not ideal from a fruit growing perspective but there is an absolutely magical feeling in there. The farm itself and setting is beautiful but stepping into the orchard is like like entering another world.
Most of the work I did was cutting off dead dying and diseased wood (very little disease given the circumstances) and thinning and restructuring the trees to a natural shape. In some cases I kept branches that didn’t fit the future structure I was setting but were healthy with plenty of fruiting wood – they can always go later on as the replacement branches are developing. You can see in one of the photos I have splayed potential new scaffold branches from the trunk of the tree with temporary pegs I cut from the leylandii. Once the new branch angles are set later in the year the pegs can be removed.
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