FRUIT TREES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 282, 23 August 1940, Page 14

FRUIT TREES

How To Prune Them People differ as to whether recentlyplanted fruit trees like apples, pears and .plums should be pruned before spring or left uncut till the following autumn. I advocate pruning all fruit trees planted since last summer, before their buds unfold this spring—in fact, now, writes a correspondent to an overseas garden magazine. The usual thing is to plant trees some three or four years old; trees with a framework of spaced-out branches already built up by skilled nursery hands. Generally speaking, the pruning these need is to remove twigs and growths bruised or broken in transit or during planning; to cut back side or lateral shoots, to within three or four buds of their base; and to shorten the leading shoot which extends each main branch, by about half.

The new gooseberry and red currant bushes, in their early days, need much the same treatment. Cut back lateral or side shoots to two or three buds and shorten by at least one-half of their length “leaders” and shoots you are training up to till gaps in the framework of branches. New black currant bushes are a different proposition. With these, no framework of big branches is needed, nor should there be a short main stem or “leg”’ before branching. All the growths should spring right from the ground-level, or below. If you have planted one or two-year-old black currant bushes, sacrifice any chance of fruit the first summer and straightway cut down every shoot in every bush to within two or three buds of the ground. If older bushes have been planted—bushes three or four years old —cut back most of the growths in these, too. Leave only a few of the sturdiest and strongest young’growths to bear fruit in the first year.