Community Orchard sleeping trees

We spent the afternoon in the Overton Community Orchard pruning the final set of apple trees for this year. The trees will have been in the orchard for five years this spring, though they were a mixture of two and one year old saplings when we put them in.

The picture here is possibly the best shaped and sized example, with the best open structure we have. Some of the others are gradually getting to the right shape, but this one came grew this way all on it's own.

We're pruning for a few reasons. We don't want them to get too big, or we won't be able to manage the and we don't want them to cast a shadow over the neighbours. We want them to remain a good shape so people can reach the fruit and finally we want to encourage the trees to produce fruiting buds so we get a good even crop of apples from them.

There were just the two of us today and it took a few hours to finish the last three trees. One person point to a branch with a long stick and the other prunes it with a long reach tree pruning tool. It's much easier that way than trying to do it on your own as to get a good view you need to look at the tree from a different angle than you are standing when you are trying to prune it!