K wrote:
Dwayne writes

Keep in mind that
apples grow on second year wood. If you remove off all the new growth
(which is pretty hard to do), you wont have any apples the following
year.

It's true that they don't fruit on first year wood, but not true that if
you remove all the new growth you won't have apples the next year. On
second year and older, apples build up fruiting spurs, little stubbly
branches about an inch long, which is where the flowers sprout from year
after year. It's these you need to be careful of.

Isn't there some complication where some apples (and pears) are spur-
bearing and others are tip-bearing? I'm sure the procedure is different
for each, but that's about the extent of my knowledge.

Pruning is something of a black art as far as I'm concerned. I
have about twenty apple trees that have been largely neglected since
they were planted fifteen years ago or more. At the moment I'm largely
ignoring fruiting in favour of trying to get them into a reasonable
shape tree. Once that is sorted I'll try to work out which are spur-
bearers and which are tip-bearers, but as I have no idea what variety
most of them are, that'll have to be done by inspection, I guess.

I'm currently trying to recover a quince that is leaning heavily to
one side (about 30 degrees to the horizontal now). Pruned a load of
branches off it today that are making a mess of its neighbouring
Bramley. It's still a mess of a tree though.

James