January/February
This is a good time to be pruning your apple trees. If you can come to one of our workshops you will learn everything you need to know, but if you can't, here are our
Five Top Tips for Pruning
1 Focus on the leader of your tree; height is key.
Single out the leading branch to get the tree to grow tall and straight.
2 The trunk should be a smooth cylindrical shape.
If there are branches that are restricting that shape remove them so that the flow is upwards.
3 You can remove up to 25% of fruiting wood
4 Cut in the right place, always back to the main trunk
5 Be brave!
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Late Summer
- Make sure the grass is kept short under the trees, taking out the leggy stalks so that you build a soft grass blanket for the fruit to fall on
- If you have wild flowers leave them to seed, but cut thistles and weed, because weeds don’t like being cut, grass does. If you want to suppress weeds you cut them, if you want to encourage grass you cut it.
- Thinning of trees. Middle or end of June - the “June drop” - all the fruit the tree feels it can’t manage it drops off. After that, with a young tree, you can encourage its health if you feel it doesn’t look too good by taking off all or most of the fruit. It will mean it delivers much better fruit in years to come.
- Look at Bramleys. If you have clusters of three apples you know you are going to have three big fruits and at least one of them will get pushed off or the branch will break. What you can do is break off one of them so that the remaining two grow back to back happily.
- Cox trees - ropes of fruit grow downwards sometimes, and underneath the rope the fruit will be stunted because it doesn’t get the sun. Strip the underside, and even pick out some from the rope. If you leave all of the fruit you will end up with poor quality.
- Check moth traps, either to catch the moths or to check the population.
- Prepare for the harvest, fruit bins, machinery, track repairs.
- Keep an eye on the fruit; cut into it and check whether the pips are white (not ripe) black (ripe) For storing, or for a clear juice, pick underripe.
- Clear the ground under cider trees ready for the fruit to drop.
Early Autumn 2013
Here in Somerset the harvest is arriving a bit later this year due to the vagaries of the weather, but wherever you are it's a good idea to check the ripeness of the fruit.
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- Cut into an apple and look at the pips. If they are white the fruit is not ripe. If they are brown the fruit is under ripe; black and the fruit is ripe and ready to go.
- If an apple tastes good it will make good juice; if it tastes awful it will make good cider!
- The best apple juices have a dryer nature for better thirst quenching, so choose your blends and time of picking carefully.
- If you are picking fruit for eating or juicing you need to pick it off the tree by hand and not allow it to fall on the ground. This is to avoid pathogens getting into the fruit which will not be killed by pasteurisation.
- (If you are making cider you can pick the apples up from the ground because the fermentation process kills all the pathogens.)
- Try to cup your hand gently round the fruit and twist it off the branch so that you avoid bruising or breaking the delicate flesh.
- If you want to store your fruit whole, either for keeping for culinary purposes (Bramleys) or until you get around to doing something with them, pick the fruit slightly under ripe and store in a cool dark place. Bramleys can be wrapped in newspaper to prevent them touching each other so that one rotten apple doesn't spoil the whole lot.
