20%

The two big spring pruning jobs – the cooking apple tree and the Buddleja davidii – have been done for another year, helped by several dry days.  Both plants pre-date us in the garden, and I have to say that neither is ideally positioned in the garden, but they are where they are, they’re much too mature to move, and I have to make the best of it.

The apple tree was a lot smaller when I laid out the vegetable garden, close by.  I didn’t really appreciate just how much shade it would cast as it grew bigger, and neither did it occur to me how far the branches would spread (particularly when fruiting; the apples are big and heavy and pull the branches down low); they are now reaching over the edge of the veg plot, right at the point where I put the main entrance/exit.  The positioning of that was part of the geometric design, but not very practical; in recent months I’ve been going in and out by stepping on one of the outer beds rather than ducking under the apple tree, not ideal.

20%?

So when I started pruning this year, the first cuts were made to remove two branches that had been threatening to poke me in the eye whenever I emerged from the veg plot by the proper path.  There’s more that can be done to improve matters, but not this year.  It’s not advisable to remove too much wood – no more than 20% - from an apple tree in one year, otherwise it responds by sending up ‘water shoots’, long spindly shoots that reach for the sky and get too tall to cut back; I’ve done that in the past and don’t want to go there again.  As it is, I’m still trying to get rid of the last batch of water shoots, some of which are completely out of reach, and the only solution is going to be to remove entirely some of the branches that they spring from.  So staying within the 20% becomes a matter of judging what to take out and what to leave for next time.  How do you quantify 20% of an apple tree?  What does 20% of an apple tree look like?  I think I may have overdone it this year, so I hope the remaining 80%, if that’s what it is, doesn’t get too upset.

Last year I checked the tree regularly for unwanted buds appearing on the big branches and rubbed them out, which seems to have reduced the number of spindly shoots, so I must remember to do the same this year.  While pruning this time I took the opportunity to remove any badly placed buds as I came across them; at least then they won’t add to next year’s 20% of removed wood!  There’s too much congestion in the tree as it is.   I’ve mentally earmarked a few branches for removal next year (memo to self: take out the topmost branch pointing towards the greenhouse, and some of the northeastern side).  But the 20% rule is always going to constrain how much I can do at any one time!

This year – or more properly, last year – the tree seems to have held on to quite a lot of undeveloped fruitlets, which I’ve had to knock off.  I don’t think I’ve seen that before, and I don’t know what has caused it – or what to do about it.  There certainly was no shortage of (good) fruit.

The buddleja is always a time-consuming job, not only because it’s so big but also because of all the prunings to be sorted and disposed of.  Some of these make good stakes for use around the garden, but I always keep too many of them.  The plant is very old, very woody and very large (and why on earth was it planted so close to the gooseberry bush?).  At least there is no problem about percentages of wood to remove: you remove the lot, cut as low down as possible.  In the case of this plant, that’s about waist-height, because over the years all the growth has created a woody base with a hollow centre, and nearly all the shoots come from the top of that.  This year I’ve tried to remove those shoots on the outside edge of the trunk; they tend to grow outwards (rather than straight up), which causes the plant to spread out too much, and those stems flop out over the lawn (and usually break off when caught by the wind).  We’ll see if that works.

Buddleja before ....

.... and after pruning

It’s that time of year when a wander round the garden often reveals something new in flower: a lone cowslip in this case, flowering in a corner by the summerhouse.