Pruning? It’s actually very easy. First, determine your tree. Is your subject a Brown Turkey fig? A Madam Blanchette nectarine? A – give me strength – Five Variety Family plum, which you bought off a leaflet you found on the bus? Moving on. Is it in its maiden – no seriously – year? Or well established? Or needing renovation? Not sure? Hazard a guess. And what season are we in? Late autumn, in Britain at least, sidling into early winter. You have your secateurs; your sexy folding pruning saw; strong hands, or at least opposable thumbs; a can-do attitude. That’s everything you’ll need for this tutorial. Let’s begin.
Although, if it’s a plum tree, don’t. You’ll give it silver-leaf. It’ll die, and everyone will ask, with maddening smugness: “Didn’t you know to wait for the spring?” And you’ll scowl and become unpopular. So find something else: yes, a pear. That’ll do. Though why bother growing pears? Apples are entirely superior, in crunch, in subtlety, in variety; give me an Egremont Russet, an aniseedy Ellison’s Orange, for any number of glacially dull Conferences, the pear named after a meeting.
OK, fine. Here’s your pear. All you need to do is…
Wait.
Is that an upright bud on a semi-vertical lateral shoot off a fourth-year horizontal, or a supplementary eye? Have we dressed it with burnt earth and syringed the leaves? Is this the stoning period? No, hang on, I’m on Grapes, and this book’s from 1946. One moment... So, with Pears, it’s a simple matter of heading back a maiden tree and allowing three shoots to grow, which the following year are cut back to two opposed side-buds, which (year three) will double again, provided that, by spacing the shoot-buds, you avoid the crowded crotch.
Obviously, I’m assuming that you’re pruning to increase productivity, not merely to enhance appearance. But had you decided, after checking your variety, which shape you preferred: bush, gridiron, pyramid, a triple-U cordon, a classic espalier? Don’t forget that a pear – sorry, Pear – is pruned much harder than an Apple. Plus, it depends on whether you’ve gone for triploid or diploid, dehorning to prevent crop exhaustion and/or bud-thinning. Assuming you’ve chosen the right stock, which goes without saying. Oh, you’re not sure?
I, despite my mercurial (some might say dazzling) intellect, struggle to follow technical, or indeed any, instructions
Any fool can garden, although few do. I, despite my mercurial (some might say dazzling) intellect, struggle to follow technical, or indeed any, instructions. What is a lateral? How is a leader? When is the axila equal to the sprocket on the other calyx-hoists? Perhaps all this theory is overcomplicating a straightforward task. It may be time to turn from words, my true love, my lifeblood; to abandon the comedy old-school handbooks (“Wasps’ nests should be destroyed. Country children will find them for a small reward”: The Book of Pears and Plums, Rev E Bartrum, 1903) and consult something with pictures.
It’s not as if there’s a shortage: How to Garden in One Minute a Year handbooks; sober monotone manuals; fascinatingly retro magazines (“GET A LOAD OF THESE LEEKS!”); celebrity gardeners’ chickens-and-dahlias My Humble Life Christmas-ready extravaganzas. There are also – less glamorously but, for most people, more practically – websites and a trillion online videos. The problem is that none of them – stagily photographic or calmly diagramatic – can help. My spatial awareness is so lacking that I cannot relate any picture to the real branches before me.
But my dream, among many others, is to be self-sufficient in apples. I have one small new Rosemary Russet and two nameless rescue trees; a spindly quince (birthday present) and a donated grapevine in a roof-terrace pot. There’s also, in my fruit-cage, a feral tangle of kiwi tendrils, blackberry canes and violent gooseberry bushes, which, like a family secret, I can’t bring myself to face. Even if I concentrate purely on the apples, the task seems overwhelming. They already bear the scars of my previous efforts: knobbly half-shoots, an unusual vertical habitat, minimal cropping. My appetite is mighty; I need far more fruit. Step aside. I’m going to master pruning.
I turned to the experts: my friend Hugh in Belfast, who, post-work beer in hand, casually explained the difference between buds and spurs, basal cl¾ thanks, I’d love another glass. Where were we? Back at the allotment, I begged for advice: from P, who has a single Bramley pruned into an enormous box-shape; V, who reinvigorated her Sunset by removing the middle to create a goblet. They all promised to show me how they did it; just not now. Then K, our site’s quiet genius, gave me a brief tutorial, during which I lost part of her secateurs but understood, at least fleetingly, the difference between winter and summer pruning. It’s merely a question of differentiating between wood shoots and fruit spurs, then spigotting the anguilard to within four eyes of the rosette. Once you know, it’s actually very simple. Honestly, I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss.