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I'm sorry, I have abused my Bramley apple...
Catherine Joyce
Posts: 14
in Fruit & veg
Hi
Please be gentle with me - I'm a novice gardener, on a very steep learning curve, which I often fall off...
I aquired an old Bramley tree in the garden of my new house, and took some (possibly rather poor) advice from a friend to prune it hard. I did so in January 2013 and, of course, it threw up a lot of watershoots....
I read (in desperation) that you could summer prune the watershoots and control the size of the tree that way and get it back to how it should be. Is that right? If so when in summer (mid June or later?) and how?
The apple is in blossom (in the older branches) now.
Many thanks
0
Posts
Catherine. I just looked at the RHS website and found this rather simple explanation which might help you. It seems to suggest all pruning is done in the winter (when the tree is dormant) and for a very over grown tree you plan it over a few years rather than all at once.
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=279
I hope it helps.
Catherine, I make this mistake year after year
as I never remember to get it done on time in the winter, only just starting to think about it now. Sometimes I leave it, I've had 'people' in to do it (badly) and sometimes I accept loosing fruit (not sure if there are other issues here as well) and prune in summer. At the moment I'm waiting for Oh to get a chain saw hired for it, I did ask in winter but he's not got round to it yet! It always looks 'a mess' 
.
Sorry that's not very helpful but I hope you do better than me, and I will try (again) to follow advice on here.