Pruning

After spending yesterday chopping a load of firewood, today was more pleasantly spent doing a load of winter pruning. The clematis growing on the arbour (Alba Plena) need cutting back to 18" in March, for instance, and the roses all need tidying. A lot of the spring bulbs are showing signs of growth, and the flowering currants are just in bloom. By next weekend, the daffodils should be coming out.

The biggest winter pruning job is that of the apples. The established apple trees all needed a tidy-up, just as they did last year. One more year, and they should all be reasonably organized: we've spread the wok over a few years, to avoid removing too much in one go. Several of the new, standard-trained apples needed laterals trimming, although most still haven't reached their 1.8m height, at which they get topped, and start forming the framework proper.

Most excitingly, we also cut all of the apple walk apples down to height. They've all been cut to about 30cm, where we want the first horizontal tier of the espaliers to fall. In two cases, Cat's Head and Grandpa Buxton,  I actually cut them off at 45cm above this, at the height of the second tier, and have nicked above an appropriately placed bud to form the bottom tier. I've taken this approach as I wasn't absolutely sure that these hadn't been double worked, as there was a wound and new leader trained in above where the bottom espalier will be, and I didn't want to cut off all the Cat's Head/Grandpa Buxton, and leave an unknown interstem.

This left me with a bundle of eighteen sticks of various apples...and a reluctance to throw them away. So, instead, I've grafted them all onto the established apple trees. If they take, they're a back-up for the apple walk trees, and I can use them to graft new (possibly step-over) trees next winter. If they don't, I've not lost anything (well, apart from a couple of hours work).