Even if the apple tree you planted a few years ago has grown full size, annual pruning is still needed to keep it healthy and fruitful.
Here’s some advice.
Step one: Clean it up.
Start pruning by removing diseased, dead and broken branches. They are easy to spot because they are shriveled and their buds remain lifeless while healthy buds on the rest of the tree are swelling.
Cut back dead or broken branches to healthy buds. Cut diseased branches a half-foot back into healthy wood.
Step two: Choose and chop
Prune back some larger, albeit healthy, branches. Do this to offset the natural tendency for upper branches to grow most vigorously and to shade lower ones.
To minimize regrowth, cut these branches back to their origins, or to match the lengths of weaker-growing side branches.
First shorten the limb to about a foot and undercut slightly before sawing from above. Then saw off the rest of the limb, up to the collar at the base of the limb to promote good healing.
Water sprouts (suckers) are overly vigorous, vertical branches that not only are unfruitful and produce poor-quality fruit, but also shade the interior of the tree. Remove water sprouts right at their bases. If there are many water sprouts, do not remove all of them in one season or the interior of your tree will sunscald.
At the other end of the spectrum in vigor are stems that are too weak to fruit well. Invigorate young, weak stems by shortening them, which stimulates growth from buds just below cuts.
Step three: So long, stubby
The final stage in pruning is to work on the spurs, which are the clusters of fat, stubby stems that actually bear the fruits.
With age, apple spurs become weak and overcrowded. Invigorate individual spurs by shortening them back to strong buds. Where spurs are overcrowded, remove some so that fruits will be evenly distributed, but not crammed, along the branches of your tree.
– The Associated Press
