Rodney, local movie star and coincidentally our warehouse manager, has been ogled over a million times on YouTube, where his charisma and acting skills steal the show in our best film work to date, how to plant a fruit tree<\/a>.<\/p>\n And that rotter Steven Edholm on YouTube<\/a> has ruined everything for us with his blooming brilliant videos on pruning fruit trees<\/a>, apples and pears in particular. If you are not interested in pruning fruit trees then this post probably isn’t for you, but before you go it raises this general point of interest:<\/p>\n “Some garden practices are inherited from other contexts, like farming. You’ll have to watch his and our apple & pear pruning videos to see what we’re on about, but like every other tree nursery in Britain, our formative pruning<\/strong> advice for fruit trees<\/a> is based on a style that Steven calls “prune and pray”. Steven also promotes notching: a simple, powerful orchardist’s technique, an alternative to making heading cuts (which cut off a lot of wood early in the tree’s life) in order to direct the growth of new shoots.
Luckily, we are not in the leather tanning<\/a> business or the axe industry<\/a>, otherwise we would have to update all our content on those subjects as well.<\/p>\n\n
But farmers working their orchards are on the clock and need to make a profit while managing acres of trees, so they like shortcuts!
In the garden, we can give our few fruit trees much more personal attention when pruning and training.”<\/p>\nAshridge, Somerset, 2024<\/cite>\n<\/blockquote>\n
By simply cutting the head off the young tree, you get very little control over where the branches will form, and potentially set the tree up to break apart in a storm some 30 years later, when it’s fully grown.<\/p>\n
Notching causes new branches to break from dormant leaf buds. This gives you much more control over where new branches form and leaves more of the tree intact, so it can grow quicker.<\/p>\n