How do I bring a neglected old apple tree back into production?

An old unpruned apple tree is usually worth saving. It is on a rootstock that has proved itself on that soil, it has a root system nothing new will match for twenty years, and it is very often an interesting old variety. What it has is a dense crown that keeps light off its own fruit, a lot of dead wood, and a habit of putting its energy into vertical shoots. Restoring it is a patient job, and the patience is the technique: cutting hard produces a forest of water shoots and leaves you worse off than before.

Safety

What you'll need

• Sharp bypass secateurs
• Loppers
• A pruning saw
• Gloves and eye protection
• A properly footed ladder or a tripod ladder (optional)
• Disinfectant for tools between trees (optional)

Step by step

1. Assess the tree honestly before starting.Bracket fungus on the trunk, a hollow or badly decayed stem, large dead limbs or a lean that has recently changed all mean it needs an arborist's opinion first. Restoration assumes a structurally sound tree.
2. Work in winter, between leaf fall and bud break.Apples and pears only. Plums, gages, damsons and cherries must never be cut in winter because of silver leaf — those are restored in late spring and summer.
3. Stand back and decide the finished shape first.You are aiming for an open goblet: a clear framework of well-spaced main limbs, an open centre, and a height you can pick from. Decide which limbs are staying before you cut anything.
4. Winter one: take out all dead, damaged and diseased wood.This is safe, always correct, and on a badly neglected tree it is a surprising proportion of the job. Cut back to healthy wood, to a branch collar, leaving no stubs.
5. Winter one: then remove one or two of the worst-placed large limbs.Choose the ones crossing the centre, rubbing, or duplicating another. Cut back to the point of origin at the branch collar, using an undercut first so the bark does not tear. Then stop for the year.
6. Winter two: open the centre.Remove crossing and inward-growing branches so light reaches the middle. The old test still works: the crown should be open enough for a bird to fly through.
7. Winter two: deal with the water shoots.The first pass will have produced a crop of vigorous vertical shoots. Remove most of them cleanly at their base, but keep any that are well placed to fill a gap — bend and tie those towards horizontal instead, which turns them into fruiting wood.
8. Winter three: reduce the height.Take tall leaders back to a strong outward-facing side branch rather than cutting them off flat. Cutting to a side branch keeps a natural shape and produces far less regrowth than a blunt reduction.
9. Thin the spur systems on the branches you have kept.Very old spurs branch into congested clusters carrying many weak buds. Cut out a proportion of the oldest clusters. This is where the improvement in fruit size comes from.
10. Feed, mulch and clear the grass afterwards.Sulphate of potash in late winter, mulch over damp soil, and a clear circle of a metre or more. A restored tree is asked to grow new wood and it needs the resource to do it.
11. Expect no useful crop for a year or two.The tree spends the first two years rebuilding structure. Fruit quality improves markedly in year three and after.

Tips

• Cut to a bud or a branch, never mid-stem. A stub dies back and rots into the branch behind it.
• Use a three-cut method on any limb heavy enough to tear: an undercut a little way out, a top cut just beyond it to drop the weight, then a final clean cut at the collar.
• Do not paint wounds with sealant. It traps moisture and interferes with the tree's own compartmentalisation. Clean cuts left open are correct.
• If the tree is a good old variety, take some one-year shoots as graft wood in winter — a specialist nursery or a local orchard group can graft them onto new rootstock for you.
• Photograph the tree each winter before you cut. Progress is hard to judge from memory and the photos make the next year's decisions much easier.

Common mistakes

• Doing the whole job in one winter — Removing half a crown triggers an explosion of vertical water shoots that carry no fruit, shade the tree and take years to sort out. A quarter a year, for three years, is the whole technique.
• Topping the tree — cutting all the leaders off at one height — It produces a dense mass of weak regrowth from below the cuts, ruins the shape permanently and creates large wounds that decay. Reduce to a side branch instead.
• Restoring a plum or cherry in winter — Winter cuts are the entry point for silver leaf, which kills plums and cherries. Stone fruit is pruned between late spring and midsummer.
• Leaving the water shoots to grow because they look healthy — Vertical shoots are vegetative and produce almost no fruit. Remove most at the base; tie down any you want to keep.

Questions people ask