The RHS has flagged important jobs for gardeners to carry out in January. (Image: Getty)
A warning has been issued to people with pear or apple trees in their as much of Britain shivers in icy January temperatures.
The flags important jobs for throughout the year to ensure their plants and trees continue to flourish as the seasons change.
For January, this includes apple and pear trees to encourage regrowth – though the charity stresses the importance of not going overboard.
In , the RHS recommends them in , when the leaves are off the tree, advising taking off “between 10-20% of the overall canopy off in any one “.
are told to work around the tree evenly while keeping an eye on the size of the pile.
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Apple tree (Image: Getty)
If it’s looking a bit big, “STOP – you can always go back next year and do some more”, it adds.In healthy trees, excessive will bring too much regrowth, resulting in “vigorous upright branches called watershoots”, which are best avoided as they “crowd the crown”.
If these watershoots are growing in a way that’s helpful, like filling a gap, you can it by about a third to encourage branching, but otherwise the RHS reccomends removing them from their point of origin.
The aim of it is to remove a bit of old wood every so that new wood is stimulated, though “the majority of the fruiting wood should be quite young – one to four years old, which is the wood that fruits best”.
By creating an “open centre” for the tree, more light will fall into the canopy, ripening both the shoots and the fruit, while greater air movement will help keep diseases at bay.
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Though the appearance of your tree is important, the RHS discourages giving it a “hair cut” and staggering the cuts throughout the canopy to ensure even regrowth.
“If you only the top branches, this is where all the new growth will shoot up from, giving you a thicket of young, non-fruiting shoots that you’ll just end up off every year in exasperation,” the charity says.
“This will also reduce fruiting of tip and partial tip-bearing such as ‘Bramley’ and ‘Discovery’ as most of the fruiting wood will be removed.”
Instead, it is better to selectively remove or shorten branches here and there and focus on areas with crowded growth. This can also be addressed by pulling out seelings in bunched up areas to give them greater space to grow.
Once you’re finally facing a long-avoided garden task it can be easy to overdo, but the RHS warns against very big cuts – as well as very small ones.
“Even with very old trees, resist the temptation to off large limbs,” it says, as they are at risk of decay.
Gardeners are advised to think twice before “cutting into branches that are more than 10-12cm (4-5in) in diameter”.
“If you must that branch, trace it away from the tree to see if there is a narrower section, perhaps where it forks and prune there instead,” and avoid leaving a stump, it adds.Most pruning cuts will be needed for branches measuring between 1-5cm (½-2in). The RHS says only 10-20 cuts may be needed in total to complete the whole job.
The guidance is suitable for apples and pears grown as bush or standard trees and is recommended to be carried out between November to early March. It isn’t neccessary to use a paint for cuts on either apple or pear trees as it may be with others plants more susceptible to disease, the organisation adds on its website.