Lovers of home-grown vegetables and fruits grow apple and pear trees in many garden plots. In order for the trees to bear fruit well, at the beginning of each season it is necessary to form a crown, removing unnecessary branches. Experts give advice on how to properly prune apple and pear in spring.
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When to start pruning
The timing of when to start pruning varies depending on the climatic characteristics of a particular region.
The main rule that must be observed is to wait until the frost ends. In the middle zone of the country, this is most often mid-March, but in the north, cold snaps can occur in April.
At low temperatures, the wood becomes fragile, there is no sap flow, so all wounds inflicted on the tree will heal for a long time, which can lead to its illness and death. However, it is impossible to delay this procedure until the buds open - the tree will spend energy on feeding the branches, which will subsequently be removed.
Pruning trees
Take care of the tool before you start trimming. You may need a sharp hacksaw, pruning shears, large garden shears. In addition, you need to prepare a clay chatterbox to cover up the cuts. You can use for this purpose and garden var.
Before starting the procedure, you should carefully examine each tree. The first step is to remove all dried, diseased, damaged branches. They need to be cut with a hacksaw as close to the trunk as possible - there should be no knots.
First, using a hacksaw, you need to remove large shoots, and then with a pruner - small ones. To reduce the thickening of the crown, you should get rid of all branches that grow upward.
When pruning old apple and pear trees, it is important to remember that adult specimens do not respond well to the removal of a large number of shoots. Therefore, it is not recommended to get rid of many healthy branches at once.
Pruning young specimens is necessary in order to form a strong skeleton that can withstand a large harvest of apples and pears. In addition, the removal of some of the branches helps to reduce too active growth, which often has a negative effect on the fertility of trees.
It is also important to form a beautiful crown. Most summer residents choose a rounded shape in which skeletal branches are placed in tiers. In each of them, it is necessary to leave 4-5 main shoots at a distance of about 20-30 cm from each other. The interval between tiers should be 40-80 cm.
The higher the tier, the thinner the branches should be. So that the crown does not suffer from lack of air and sunlight, its lateral projection should look like a slightly concave or slightly convex arc.
The angles at which the shoots move away from the trunk are of great importance. Incorrectly growing branches should be removed.
The optimum value is approximately 90 °. If the branch grows more upward, it may break under the weight of the fruit. If the shoot is located at an obtuse angle, it develops poorly and can become infertile.
If you do not want to cut a branch that is not growing correctly, you can try to change the growth angle using tension. It is necessary to tie up the shoot with twine, pull it to a pole hammered into the soil near a tree, and fix it.
When pruning a pear, it should be borne in mind that its crown is thinner and lighter than that of an apple tree. Bud awakening in this tree is much weaker, so the branches can be pruned painlessly.
The shape of crowns for pear trees should be selected depending on the variety. In tall and medium-sized species, it is required to prefer a tiered and sparsely tiered, for low varieties are considered optimal crown in the form of a spindle with a horizontal orientation of the branches on trunk.
Pear trees tend to thicken the crown, which can negatively affect the yield. Therefore, they need to be cut not near the trunk, like in an apple tree, but in that lateral shoot, which is more developed. In addition, in order to prevent a dense crown, pruning the pear once a year is not enough. Shoots should be thinned out after the end of fruiting, in the autumn, but before the onset of frost.
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