0
About the Author:
Posted on 7:34 PM by Wanto and filed under
All Streamcorner's,
Fruit Trees
By Matthew McCougney
What has already been said concerns the laterals or side growths only. Do not touch the leaders or end growths at all in the summer. Leave them until the following May and then prune them in accordance with their length and strength.
Since 1947, however, I have found it possible to make the scheme even simpler, and at the Thaxted Horticultural College where this pruning is regularly done, huge crops result, while the trees themselves are limited to the space allotted to them. The Lorette pruner is after the production of fruit buds. He knows that he is forced by civilization to grow trees in some unnatural way and he is after heavy crops of perfect specimens. He rightly hates a tree with barren branches.
There are two main forms of summer pruning, the first I call the Old English Method and the second the Anglicized Lorette. In the Old English Method the laterals or side growths were cut back by about half in order to let the sunshine get at the apples and pears and thus ripen them and colour them properly.
The pruning starts in June the moment some of the laterals are 7 or 8 inches long. No lateral is cut back until it reaches this length and until it is, as the gardeners have it, 'semi-mature'. At this stage of, say, 8 inches, the lateral is pruned back to within an inch of its base with a pair of sharp secateurs, say a Wilkinson's or a Rolcut. It must be emphasized that the laterals that have not reached the length of 7 or 8 inches must be left alone, and if there should be readers who cannot believe that a side shoot must be cut back so hard then may I reiterate the words 'to within an e inch of their base', that is to say, the base of the one-year-old shoot concerned.
Because you have to leave the laterals until they reach the right condition, it does mean that the trees have had to be gone over, say, every three weeks from the middle of June until the end of September.
No shoot is cut back until it is ready and any laterals which do not reach the right length by the end of September are left until the following summer. All this sounds very revolutionary but the compost fruit grower will find that it really does work.
Since 1947, however, I have found it possible to make the scheme even simpler, and at the Thaxted Horticultural College where this pruning is regularly done, huge crops result, while the trees themselves are limited to the space allotted to them. The Lorette pruner is after the production of fruit buds. He knows that he is forced by civilization to grow trees in some unnatural way and he is after heavy crops of perfect specimens. He rightly hates a tree with barren branches.
There are two main forms of summer pruning, the first I call the Old English Method and the second the Anglicized Lorette. In the Old English Method the laterals or side growths were cut back by about half in order to let the sunshine get at the apples and pears and thus ripen them and colour them properly.
The pruning starts in June the moment some of the laterals are 7 or 8 inches long. No lateral is cut back until it reaches this length and until it is, as the gardeners have it, 'semi-mature'. At this stage of, say, 8 inches, the lateral is pruned back to within an inch of its base with a pair of sharp secateurs, say a Wilkinson's or a Rolcut. It must be emphasized that the laterals that have not reached the length of 7 or 8 inches must be left alone, and if there should be readers who cannot believe that a side shoot must be cut back so hard then may I reiterate the words 'to within an e inch of their base', that is to say, the base of the one-year-old shoot concerned.
Because you have to leave the laterals until they reach the right condition, it does mean that the trees have had to be gone over, say, every three weeks from the middle of June until the end of September.
No shoot is cut back until it is ready and any laterals which do not reach the right length by the end of September are left until the following summer. All this sounds very revolutionary but the compost fruit grower will find that it really does work.
About the Author:
To make sure you get unbruised fruits from the fruit trees in your garden that will taste their best and keep for the maximum amount of time, treat them as though you were handling eggs.
Post a Comment