What a glorious fruitful year it is with many of the trees laden with fruit. The perennial question I am asked is: “Why oh why would you prune fruit trees in the summer? Surely its better in the winter?” The answer, as usual in permaculture, is: “it depends”.
Most Fruit Trees are Summer Pruning Candidates
Firstly, all of the prunus species of fruit tree are summer rather than winter candidates for pruning, so it you have cherries or plums winter pruning runs some extra disease risks. Most apple and pear trees benefit from summer pruning, many suffering from excessive winter pruning without the appropriate summer care. Summer pruning mostly addresses this year’s vigorous growth, directing that energy to future fruiting. So most mature apple and pear trees I tend to benefit from skillful summer pruning.
Here is a little video about dealing with water shoots during summer pruning:
I tend to the orchard care needs of customers in Cork and Kerry, and sometimes further afield in counties Limerick and Clare. Get in touch to book your orchard care service.
Will Summer Pruning Harm my Fruit Crop?
Don’t worry, summer pruning is mostly on new leafy growth. I conserve and improve the healthy fruiting wood including the apple crop by summer pruning. I remove dead dying and diseased wood at every opportunity.
My Pruning Story
My interest in the care of fruit trees goes back to over 20 years ago when I was a curious teenager and I have tended to hundreds of orchards since turning professional back in 2016. Some pruning jobs involve a few small trees in a domestic garden while other jobs can involve tending to centuries old orchards on the grounds of old estates.
Holistic Orchard Care
While there are general rules and concepts that apply to all apple trees, each one is also a unique individual with its own personal history. Because of this I treat each one according to its own circumstances, history and health condition: I have an holistic approach to orchard care.
Natural Orchard Pruning – Fukuoka
Although I have taken a number of courses on orchard care and fruit tree grafting, my biggest orchard care influence is Masanobu Fukuoka who was a pioneer of natural farming in Japan. He is most famous for his direct seeding system of rice growing in an unploughed field using no herbicides or pesticides to grow crops matching the best yields in his district. However his lesser known observations on natural fruit growing are probably more valuable to the growers in Ireland, where there are many fruit trees but no rice cultivation. His main concept regards aiming for a naturally shaped tree which will require less and less maintenance each year rather then more maintenance as is sometimes the case with the conventional systems that train trees into forms that are unnatural for the wild forms of the particular species.
To find out what this is like you can read this article, or get in touch here to get professional care for your trees.
Apple Tree Pruning Workshops and Courses
If you are interested in learning how to prune your own orchard I would love to teach you how at one of my orchard care courses in the new year, dates to be announced. All upcoming courses are listed here in the online shop. To stay abreast of these announcements sign-up for email updates and never miss out on orchard care, permaculture and sustainability skills courses.
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