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Gardening in the UK

apple tree problems

frenchie_organic

15 years ago

I have a bramley apple tree that we brought over from England 3 years ago, it has cropped every year, but instead of growing upwards its growing outwards and down, how do I prune it to stop the branches touching the ground ? I picked over 14 kilos of fruit off it yesterday to relieve it of some weight, so that the branches didnt break

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Comment (1)

plantzzman
15 years ago
It can depend to an extent on vigour of the tree which is often down to root stock. In general bramleys have quite alot of vigour putting on quite alot of upright growth. In your case I wonder if the tree has taken on this shape if allowed to carry alot of fruit while young. The heavy fruit pulling down the young growth which by picking time has often set into the shape you now have. Your actually likely to get a bigger crop with the growth hanging down as the sap instead of going into rampant growth wood will build up flowering growth instead. If your not happy with the trees shape and it is still young when dormant in winter cut back the weeping branches to an upward facing bud (considering they are mainly going to be facing down) hopefully in spring new growth will take on an upward route which you can then train to your required shape but once again remember to thin the fruit while young so as to not have to much weight pulling down on the branches.
Just my thoughts on the matter
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Thanks for your replies! I believe you both are correct about root problems. The trees have been in the ground for 3 years, but they've been in less than ideal conditions. They didn't have any mulch till a couple months ago. They also had only a couple drippers (2 hours with 2 1-gallon drippers, or 4 gallons per tree) on them that were close to the trunk and they got frequent shallow waterings. My soil is like concrete when it's dry. So I think the roots couldn't grow outwards. Now I have 4 drippers that circle around further from the trunk and I'm giving them deep waterings (4 hours with 4 1-gallon drippers, so 16 gallons per tree each time I water). I also added 6 inches of mulch and I also wet the entire area with the garden hose to get some activity going. I can chop off the top half of the trees if that's what you suggest.
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growth is fine above that. Its hard to tell in this photo, but thats really the main growth of the tree. If I have to cut that I'll loose 1/2+ of the tree. There was never anything physically touching the tree there. I was concerned that there is something wrong with the tree itself not physical.
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