Appy days... online help is just a green-fingered tap away Pruning fruit trees E

THE ancient Samhuinn fire festival on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill has marked the beginning of winter, so we can now start pruning our apple trees.

You can prune apple and pear trees at any point in winter as they’re dormant, but an early start has several advantages. Although outwardly dormant, their roots are still active, so trees recover more easily.

And when stripped of leaves, you’ll quickly see a tree’s overall shape and how to mould it the way you’d like. During milder weather, pruned branches and stems won’t suffer frost damage.

Fruit trees are pruned according to age and whether they’re free-standing or trained. I’ll look today at the more usual free-standing trees suitable for small and medium-sized gardens.

As ever, start by knowing or finding out an apple’s variety. Tree vigour is determined by its rootstock – that is, the roots your particular variety has been grafted on.

You can over- as well as underprune a tree that’s designed to reach a certain height. The more severely you prune a large one, the more vigorously it will grow.

Heights vary from the dwarfing rootstock M27, which grows to less than 2m, to M106, which reaches a good 5m.

Dwarfing M27 and M9 best suit small gardens and M26, reaching 3m, is possible in a slightly larger area.

You must also know where on a branch the apples grow. Most varieties produce fruiting spurs along a two-year or older branch. But a very few fruit on the tip of the previous year’s growth, while the apples on several, such as Worcester Pearmain and Bramley, are semi-tip-bearing, fruiting on both traditional spurs but also at the tips.

With tip bearers, thin out some older stems, right back to a main branch, leaving the rest to fruit. With semi-tip bearers, you will get some harvest from fruiting spurs but will end up with a smaller crop if you remove or cut back tip-bearing stems.

If you’ve just moved house and don’t know what trees you have, don’t prune this year. Watch how strongly they grow next year and where fruits form: you’ll then know how to set about it next year.

When aiming for a healthy, productive tree, prune to allow good air circulation and light to reach as much of the fruit as possible.

You achieve this by allowing the trunk to be no taller than 1m, with four or five main branches arranged in the form of a goblet, thereby allowing a