Stepover Apple Trees: Winter Pruning, Year Six
For further background info, please see:
Stepover Apple Trees: Winter Pruning, Year One
Stepover Apple Trees: Winter Pruning, Year Two
Stepover Apple Trees: Winter Pruning, Year Three
Stepover Apple Tree Update: Spring 2024 Edition
The ‘Howgate Wonder’ and ‘Keswick Codlin’ stepover apple trees on our allotment plot – there used to be a third, but a hugely overly-vigorous but under-productive ‘Blenheim Orange’ had to be removed early last year – are now six years old, and for all six of those years, I’ve been treating them to a ‘winter only’ pruning regime. In a nutshell this means I’ve allowed them to grow to their full extent each summer, and left their regrowth stems un-pruned until the following dormant season.
This sort of carry-on runs counter to the general advice given in most fruit growing books, which tend to suggest that summer pruning is necessary to maintain the trained shape of the tree. This is true as far as it goes, but to my mind it’s only really essential to prune trained trees in summer if the tree in question is part of a highly aesthetic design scheme – perhaps a veteran espalier trained on a wall in a kitchen garden of a grand estate – or there if are health and safety concerns – for instance, if the tree is growing alongside a path in a public garden – and needed to be kept neatly trimmed in order to maintain said aesthetic quality, and/or for said safety reasons.
We have no such requirements on the allotment, and so I’ve been free to ignore that general, bookish advice and let the trees produce an absolute hedge of fresh, green, strongly photosynthesising leaf growth every year. And I’m sure I’ve been reaping the benefits of doing so, both in terms of the quality of the fruit produced and the robust health of the trees themselves.
This year1And also for the past two years, although I didn’t get around to writing a winter update post in 2023 or 2024. I’ve once again taken off the forest of vertical regrowth stems at the end of February, cutting them right back to the main point-of-origin on the two main branches and/or the fruiting spur networks that have been developing rather nicely along those main branches.
Here are a few update notes on each tree:
‘Howgate Wonder’
This tree regularly produces a dozen or so huge, green and red-flushed cooking apples that regularly weigh in at upwards of 600g apiece2The record, Champion Apple to-date was 771g. Not too shabby.. They’re technically dual-purpose cooking / dessert types, but they’re so enormous it would be a challenge to eat a whole one raw, and they do cook down rather well, so pretty much all of mine end up stewed, often with accompanying blackcurrants from the freezer.
These are some of last year’s fruits; they were so big I couldn’t squeeze them all into a single photo:
Here’s the ‘Howgate Wonder’ tree back in January, with a handy backdrop of snow, which makes for a rather nice contrast that really helps the branch structure to stand out:
A few weeks later, sans-snowy mantle and ready for pruning:
After pruning, with all those long stems3They made for great practice wood in the grafting workshop that I ran at work last Saturday. removed and all those beautifully well-developed spur networks on display:
Here’s a close-up of that lovely, thick trunk with the junction of the two main branch sections, bedecked with bud-bearing fruiting spurs. Admittedly, some of those spur sections are getting a bit close to one another, so I may have to think about strategically thinning them, but probably not until next year:
Another view, this time along one of the main branches, through the fruiting spur sections. You can see I’ve left a couple of longer (slightly out of focus) ‘brindille’ stems, as they’re tipped with strong-looking fruit buds; if apples develop there then those stems will bend under the weight, and the apples should drop into a nice gap, rather than being formed tight against the stem. I’m hoping this will happen so I can assess whether or not this lowers the risk of accidental damage.
Another part of the fruiting spur network, with plenty of potential fruit buds in amongst the previous seasons’ wood:
It’s all looking rather good to me. I’ve got my fingers crossed for a record-breaking, 800g apple this year.
‘Keswick Codlin’
The second stepover tree produces prolifically rather than massively; in fact it usually sets far too many fruits, so it’s definitely one that requires rigorous thinning every June:
Again, here’s the tree in the January snow, with its hedge of regrowth stems:
And just before I pruned it last week:
And once I’d removed all of that upright re-growth:
There are some really nice, productive fruiting spurs on this tree as well, although that section in the middle, just above the trunk, is starting to look a little crowded, so again it might be thinned a bit next year. I’ll see how the tree performs this growing season and then make a decision on that basis. For now though, and based on the number of healthy potential fruit buds on the tree, I’m hoping for another bumper season:
The tree has fruited well for the past four years, so the bourse-on-bourse fruiting spurs are building up really nicely:
Fingers crossed for a good growing season; hopefully a much less cold and wet spring, and a bit more – but not too much – warmth over the summer. Let’s see how it goes.
There we have it. Two stepover trees, both of them winter-only pruned, and both of them healthy, thriving and highly productive.
If you have any questions about adopting a winter-only pruning regime or the reasoning behind avoiding summer pruning altogether, please do feel free to ask via the comments, below, or send me an email if you prefer.
Helpful photos. Thank you.
Thanks you Christopher, I’m glad you found them helpful.
As always very useful, Darren. Step-overs were on gardeners world this week, goes without saying this article was much more useful. However was amazing pictures (if true) of how much fruit Monty gets. Think I dont prune my fruit trees enough to make them suffer a bit
Hi Russ – Thank you very much, and yes, stepovers can be extremely productive, especially once they’ve matured into a regular bearing cycle. I’ll look forward to that segment on GW (we usually watch it over breakfast on a weekend).
Have you read Bas van den Ende’s interesting articles about pruning? They are on the good fruit website, which is aimed at commercial growers. Interestingly, van den Ende favours a moderate amount of summer pruning, although it wastes some of the plant’s energy. However, he is growing in Australia, where the climate may be harsher, and thus many dwarfing rootstocks struggle. He grows pears on seedling rootstock surprisingly close together.
In general, maybe there is a balance between robustness and efficiency? Summer pruning is inefficient, but it allows the use of a more vigorous rootstock, which is more robust. (e.g. if the tree is attacked by pests or the weather is unusually bad, the tree has vigour to spare). I suppose the balance of robustness vs efficiency applies to many areas of life!
Hi Stephen – Thank you very much, I haven’t had chance to read those articles yet, but I’ll definitely add them to the list. I have been promising for years to get stuck in to a deep dive and thorough review of pruning theory and fruit tree morphology more generally, but as ever, the time to do so continues to elude me. I’m due to retire in about 15 years, so maybe I’ll find the time then…
I think there’s definitely a balance to be found though, as you say, and I suspect the key take-away will eventually be that the sort of one-size-fits-all approaches in most text books are just too vague and imprecise and that a more detailed and thoughtful approach needs to be applied to different trees in different situations. But that has to be balanced against different levels of knowledge possessed by fruit tree owners, and different degrees of interest in the subject matter. We’ll see. One day.
My problem is distinguishing between fruiting buds and leaf buds. Last year (in the winter) I made dreadful decisions and seemed to have removed all the fruiting buds! I didn’t dare touch it this year, and have a ton of blossom; however, my pear is meant to have spur-bearing fruit stock, yet the blossom seems to be at the tips of the vertical growth that I left on. So you have an article with photos showing the differences between fruit buds and leaf buds?
Hi Kerry – Yes, distinguishing the two can be quite tricky. I do have some labelled photos in my piece on Winter Pruning Cordon Apple Trees, ‘Short Spur’ Method which might help.
Generally though, definite leaf buds are usually thin and lie flat against the stem. Potential fruit buds are more rounded and grow out from the stem (easier to see on the photos in that post). And I say “potential” fruit buds because if the conditions aren’t right for flowers to develop, then the bud might remain dormant, or revert to a leaf bud. But it never works the other way around – definite leaf buds won’t suddenly produce flowers, unless they have a chance to mature and initiate over the course of the season.
Worth bearing in mind thought hat pear fruit buds aren’t quite the shape as apple fruit buds, they tend to be longer and more pointed.