Apple trees are among those fruit plants in the garden that need regular pruning for vitality and yield. If you take care of your apple tree with a careful winter pruning, you can rejuvenate it and harvest more apples.

Choosing the right time to prune the apple tree in winter

The apple tree should be pruned in the late winter months between January and March. A mild day should be selected when it is neither significantly warm nor frosty cold. When cutting, pay attention to the formation of a loose treetop with a balanced relationship between height and circumference. Overall, a tree crown should consist of a central shoot and about three to four side branches. Branching off from these, the fruit-bearing branches should protrude at an angle of at least 45 degrees. If this is not the case despite the cut, they can also be bent into shape with weights or stretched cords.

Beware of diseases

Every pruning of an apple tree may be necessary in principle, but it also injures the tree bark and thus possibly opens the gates for various diseases. To prevent this, you can smooth over larger cuts with the commercially available products for treating wounds on trees. You should also make sure that when cutting vertically rising branches, there are no exactly horizontal cuts. Water would otherwise collect on these and the wound closure would permanently break open again every time it froze in winter.

Correcting mistakes and omissions of winter in summer

Basically, winter pruning is recommended for larger prunings and a rejuvenation of the tree, as it causes the branches to drift less than, for example, pruning in autumn. But you can also in summer:

  • Correct winter pruning mistakes
  • Easily identify and remove dead branches
  • Remove water shoots at the top of the tree crown
  • thin out too much fruit in favor of the fruit sweetness

tips and tricks

A regular pruning not only serves to permanently rejuvenate the apple tree, but also to stimulate the buds for fruit set. In addition, by caring for a light tree crown, diseases and fungal infestation are prevented.

Category:

Trees