Julia and I had the opportunity on February 14th 2009 to help some friends who had moved into a house with a mature garden and some old fruit trees, mainly apples and 2 pears, which were somewhat overgrown. I am putting up half a dozen videos to show roughly what we did.
What to do with an old fruit tree in a garden which is not ideally situated, may be diseased, and has not been pruned for years is probably the question I am most often asked. There is a good section on restoring a neglected and overgrown fruit garden in 'TheFruit Garden Displayed' but this excellent book is sadly out of print. I contacted the publuishers, the Royal Horticultural Society, and for reasons which seem good to them they are definitely not going to reprint it, which I think is a great pity. Anyhow, these videos are an attempt to show what we do when faced with this sort of tree.
The main problem of these trees was of being originally planted too close together, maybe 30 years ago. The other problems are perhaps secondary to this.
Our friends Andrew and Helen were prepared to take our advice to completely cut down 2 out of 4 apple trees in a row, when you have seen all the videos I invite you to agree with me that this was the right decision-these were big trees only 2 metres apart, in one case only 1 metre. This will inevitably cause the trees to grow higher and higher, reduce air and light and promote fungal diseases due to reduced air flow and increased dampness.
The other problem was overgrowth at the base of the trees which allowed rotten bark and other problems. The Late Raymond Bush (any of his books is worth its weight in gold if you see them in old book shops, all long out of print) made this point most strongly and proved it by photographs and stories. He often was asked as an orchard consultant to visit an orchard whose productivity had declined, and told the owners their trees were too close together and they should cut out every other one. When they felt able to accept and act on this advice, cropping rose.
Planting trees too close together is an easy mistake to make as apple trees are so lovely you want to have lots, but when they are too close together-unless you train them as severely restricted forms like cordons, it often ends in disappointment.
These videos are an imperfect and incomplete sketch of a morning's work, but if you watch all 6, they hopefully communicate some idea of what we do and why. I hope this helps.
Finally, beware of excessively pruning an old tree-never take out more than a third in one year. Start by removing diseased, dead and grossly overcrowded wood. Never cut back hard all round, you will uglify the tree and remove all fruit buds. Some people cut back their trees hard every year like a hedge. This is ugly, reduces fruiting and is also more much work than pruning the tree properly!
