Seeing the light - Apple Pruning

We all want a lovely red apple? The supermarkets certainly do specifying 40% of the fruit supplied has to be red.

Well pruning correctly is the answer, creating space so light can penetrate turning the apples red.

Simple? Expert William Riccini thinks so. I visited William at his farm in Bekesbourne, one of the three sites in the Wingham area that he runs with his brother David growing apples, pears and cherries.

In the Braeburn orchard, Will tells me “It’s all about creating light, the better the light penetration the better quality fruit bud that gets laid down in August and the better colour the fruit will be."

Create a table – these trees are grown with a center leader (only traditional orchards have the old bowl shape) and its from this leader that we need to make our table of branches - the largest at the bottom, a smaller table higher up and in between each there should be shorter sturdier stuff.

When creating your table, try to imagine the branches in full leaf and fruit - are they then going to be too close together? Young wood makes better fruit, so if choices are to be made between old and young wood, keep the young wood.

You are pruning now for next years crop not this years, you want buds to develop into the spaces you have created next year.

Branches should be horizontal but not below that, if lower they get weaker which makes a weaker fruit bud, remembering that some that are upright will naturally come down once they have the weight of the fruit on them.

Don’t cut right back flush/hard, with Braeburn you wont get any new bud growth, if cut too tight.

Overdoing it? - With modern varieties you are going to get more than enough fruit so don’t worry about over pruning, prune for shape, taken out old fruit bud, leaving strong fruit bud to develop.

Every fruit bud is potentially five apples they won't all set of course but it gives you the choice as to which ones will be nicer bolder apples.

You are thinning the fruit by pruning, which should reduce the amount of fruit thinning needed in June.

Will says “Pruning is always a compromise, there is no right way or wrong way just betterways, in a garden you can’t really go wrong, it all starts with pruning, getting the groundwork in."

Disease. Canker makes the tree becomes less productive (120 apples per tree is the average) so replacing the stock, to control the risk of the disease spreading throughout the rest of the orchard. 20 years is the life span of the trees, the older the tree the harder to obtain grade 1 fruit.

The Future. The market is moving towards more new short term varieties, which may only be around for 15 years then they will go. At present Gala is the most popular, then Cox, then Braeburn.

Will of course did this all very quickly, snipping here and there, I suppose with 120,000 more trees to do and only six contract pruners you need to be fast!