Now is a good time to prune many of your permanent garden plants. Just when you were getting used to the comfort of the couch and a warm winter fire, Mark and Ben come along to spoil it.
Drive round the countryside and chances are good you will see orchardists pruning their apple trees this time of year. We can learn a lot from professionals.
If you have an apple tree in your life, this is the perfect time of year to prune, before the flower buds swell in another couple of months. Pruning helps to make the tree look better, increases yield, and minimizes disease and insect problems by opening it up to filter the sunshine through the canopy.
There are two goals in pruning an apple or crabapple (as they are virtually the same thing, one is edible and the other, not so much):
Shape.Open the tree up by pruning out the top branches. This will allow sunshine to filter in on top of the fruit. Apples love sunshine. Try to create a rather odd, “vulture-like” appearance. This is Mark’s description of a great performing apple. Removing the top branches that shoot upwards for the sky and thins the tree encouraging more fruit and more accessible apples.
Prune out 1/3of the mature growth, especially the branches that overlap one another. With a sharp pair of hand pruners, cut out the water sprouts that grow straight up from the main trunk and old wood. Remove each branch by cutting back to where it meets another, desirable branch. The remaining growth should tend to grow upwards. While this sounds like a contradiction, pruning upright growth from the top and downward growth from the lower branches, you will get the picture: thicker growth in the middle of the tree will bend lower come summer when the branches are laden with fruit.
This time of year, we live for the day that our apple trees are heavy with fruit. Postponing this job until summer will produce lots of water sprouts, smaller fruit, and takes energy away from the tree while it is fruiting.
Evergreenscan be pruned this time of year. The goal is to control growth and to create a desired shape. Evergreens like spruce, pine and fir, lend themselves to pruning during the dormant season as they will thicken up come late spring and early summer when the new flush of growth arrives. To a large degree, we prune these trees to make them thicker and more attractive.
Cut branches back to another branch, the “axle”, where several new branches will bud out during the growing season providing a thicker look.
Cedar hedges. This is a good time of year to give your cedar hedge a haircut to promote thickness and to retain its shape. Now is an ideal time to get it under control.
Whatever you prune, use a sharp pair of shears or loppers and clean them from time to time of gummy sap using an ammonia solution of one-part bleach to nine parts water.
For wood over 5 cm thick, there is no substitute for a pruning saw. A quality pruning saw cuts on the fore stroke and the backstroke. Use a proper pruning saw to do the job and you will never go back. Assuming the snow isn’t too deep. In which case, enjoy the couch.
Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster, tree advocate and Member of the Order of Canada. His son Ben is a fourth-generation urban gardener and graduate of University of Guelph and Dalhousie University in Halifax. Follow them at markcullen.com, @markcullengardening, on Facebook and bi-weekly on Global TV’s National Morning Show.
