CANNY
Prune apples and pears s to maximise your crop
buyers can bag bargains this month as makers struggle to meet the September 1 deadline for new vehicles to comply with worldwide, tougher, fuel economy and emissions tests.
The trade is keen to clear stocks of existing new cars which they know won’t meet the test standards. After September 1, cars which fail the World Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure will be considered road-worthy but will have to be sold as second-hand, not new.
August discounts of up to 20 per cent are reported by What Car? magazine. For example, Citroen has cut £4,147 off the list price of a C4 Spacetourer. There’s up to 9.8 per cent (£3,379) off a Mercedes-Benz GLC Estate, and 6.8 per cent (£1,528) off a Mini Countryman.
Its New Car Buying website guide says there’s also 11 per cent (£1,439) off a Renault Clio (pictured) and 10.5 per cent (£1,971) off a Peugeot 308.
It notes: ‘The new test is proving so exacting and expensive that many car manufacturers are struggling to have their cars certified in time.’
Home- grown apples or pears may demand summer pruning. This is important for trees grown as cordons or espaliers. each year, young shoots develop from lateral buds in the spring and they will be maturing now.
If you cut each of these short, the remaining stumps will develop productive fruiting spurs for future crops. Take each young shoot and check that it has become woody at its base. If it has, cut the stem away just above the third leaf.
The stump you leave behind will develop short, twiggy growths which will produce e flowers and fruit. on mature e trees, you may notice that t existing spurs have become e congested. Leave those untouched for now and let the fruit they carry ripen.
with mature or elderly trees, the oldest fruiting spurs may y need to be thinned or r removed. But winter is the e time for that. Summer r pruning is carried out mainly y to increase yields and to o enhance fruit quality.
Low growing ‘ step- over’ apples and pears should be e treated in the same way as s espaliers or cordons. Leave e the main horizontal or lateral l stems untouched but shorten n young side- shoots as s described above.