Alan Titchmarsh lines up cordon apple trees for small spaces

You don’t need a lot of space to grow apples,

Cordons are the most productive and space-saving type of apple trees, so if you’ve a small garden they’re worth considering. Unlike your average apple tree, cordons don’t have branches. The fruit grows from short, twiggy spurs evenly spaced along the length of a broomstick-like trunk that’s about six-feet high.

Cordon apples can be grown upright as free-standing trees – space them two or three feet apart to give height to the back of a border – or on the slant in a row, 15 to 18 inches apart. This way you’ll create a fruiting hedge or garden divider supported by a post and railing fence.

Most popular varieties of apples can be bought readytrained as cordons from garden centres and nurseries, but they need the correct summer pruning each year to keep their unique shape. Without it they’d soon revert to normal branching trees.

The right time for summer pruning is towards the end of July, although in cold or northern regions it could be left till early August. Espalier-trained trees are pruned in the same way, with each arm being treated like a single cordon tree. And if you decide to grow pear trees – cordon or espalier-trained – prune them in exactly the same way as you would the apple trees. It’s a snip

For most people, pruning is a perennial cause for concern. But you really can’t go wrong with summer pruning apples – it’s like

giving the tree an all-over haircut. Start by cutting the shoot that grows out from the very top of the tree – back to the size you want to keep your cordon to – usually about six feet. This is a handy height as you can reach to pick the fruit without needing to stand on a stepladder.

Now check the entire trunk for strong, straight, new shoots that grow directly out of the trunk. Cut these back to three leaves from the trunk, not counting the cluster of tightly packed leaves where the shoot meets the trunk. They’ll then branch out and become new fruiting spurs in a few years’ time.

Next, work methodically down the trunk from top to bottom, pruning each established spur that grows out from it in turn.

Every spur is made up of a short stem that leads off from the trunk of the tree and branches out after several inches into a number of shorter sub-stems. That’s where this year’s growth will be and it’s easily recognised – all long, thin, soft, bendy shoots with leaves evenly spaced along them. Cut off all the new growth at one leaf beyond that cluster of leaves shooting from the trunk.

Where an apple’s growing on a spur, snip back the shoot to about three leaves beyond the fruit instead. This lets in light and air, which help fruit ripen. Take care not to cut off any stems that have fruit on them – sounds obvious but it’s easily done. Pruning older cordons

As cordon apple trees grow older, their spurs grow larger and twiggier and eventually become so congested they produce a lot of small and poor-quality fruit.

When this happens, summer prune as usual, but in midwinter when the tree is dormant (November to February) you’ll need to thin out the old spurs. To do this, simply cut out complicated sections where densely branching twigs overlap, rub together or touch. Aim to thin out each overcrowded spur by half to two thirds its original volume, leaving the remainder well spaced out.

Don’t remove entire spurs unless they are so close together the twiggy bits are starting to overlap. It’s far better to have lots of smaller spurs well spaced out, than a few overcrowded ones. ●S