Summer pruning

The high temperatures of the past few weeks, plus unwell children having to stay home from kinder/school and interrupting my gardening time (humf), have meant the new year has mostly stayed at the planning stage.

We did, however, get out into the orchard last Friday afternoon to Summer prune the fruit trees. Although Winter is a traditional time for fruit tree pruning and the time I will deal with the espaliered apples and pears, I read (imagine!) that pruning the stone fruit in Summer is recommended as the sap is flowing well and will heal the cuts more quickly thereby reducing the likelihood of disease getting in. The potential downside is that it is harder to see what you are doing with all the leaves still there but with my little trees only 6 months in the ground this was not going to be a problem. So with the guidance of my orchard/watering consultant (aka Dad/Poppa) we managed to fill the wheelbarrow with a suprising number of prunings in a suprisingly short time as we engineered/facilitated the beginnings of a vase shape for each tree.

 

Who knows whether we pruned off all of next year's fruit bearing branches but I am trying not to care because at this stage the priority has to be creating a good branch framework. Talk about a good lesson in delayed gratification!