Ruud Kleinpaste: Apples for next year

Flowering and fruiting seems like a long way from now, but honestly, it’s time to get out and prune the trees that will give us our apples. 

There are a heap of varieties. They all taste different and ripen at different times, but when it comes to flowering and fruiting they can roughly be put into two groups: Spur-Bearing varieties and tip-bearing varieties. 

Why is that important? 

Well… if you prune the “spurs” off in winter you’ll end up with fewer flowers (hence fruit) in summer.  

Example: Granny Smith is a tip-bearing variety. Its flowers and fruits set at the end of the branch. 

When flowering you often see a configuration of flower buds that can produce as many as 5 or 6 flowers as a “cluster”. 

When these flowers are pollinated, each can grow into an apple. 

  

Tip-bearing variety. Photo / Supplied. 

 

The next year, when the branch extends further out it has another terminal cluster of flowers at its tip. The previous year’s swollen fruiting spur can still be found further down the branch, and it will still produce apples.  

 

Photo / Supplied. 

  

The so-called Spur-Bearing varieties have their spurs somewhere on the branch and these spurs will keep on producing fruit for a number of years.  

Look how easy they are to identify as the spurs: rather fat buds that really stand out on the branches. If you want to trim the branches try to cut them a centimetre or two down from those spurs, so they can keep on producing. This picture shows the early ripening variety “Initial”. It’s one of my first apples in summer. 

 

Photo / Supplied. 

 

A slightly later Apple variety (Mid-Season harvest) is Peasgood Nonsuch. It, too, is a Spur-Bearing variety and the picture (flowering profusely) shows clearly where the apples are produced on the branches. It also indicates how to create a structure of horizontal branched at regular intervals, to keep the tree growing and give the (extremely Huge) apples some space.  

 

Photo / Supplied.  

 

When it comes to shaping an apple tree after planting it in winter, you have a few great choices: “Cordons”, “Fans”, “Espalier” etc. Seeing now is the time to plant these trees, it might be a good idea to make some decisions about what your trees are going to look like. 

See if you can grab a copy of last June’s New Zealand Gardener where Bill Brett explains the very best ways to achieve your Apple “Look”. Just be aware that espaliered trees work best with Spur-Bearing Varieties (not the tip-bearing ones). 

Waimea Nursery has a good list of Spur-bearing varieties and also indicates which ones fruit early or later. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Rude, climb past as our men in the garden more than.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
A cork and Jack, have you got an apple tree
at home?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I don't have an apple tree. We've got a lemon tree,
We've got a fijo a tree, but no apple tree. Okay,
I'm not going to have any trees as long time
listeners of the show now, but you know apple, yeah, no,
But but my brother in law is comes from from
a from a family in Nelson who had an apple
orchard for many years. So I do appreciate.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
About so no, but but a lot of people have
got When I talk about on radio about spurs and
buds and things like that, there is a difference this.
The apple buds that actually provide flowers and then fruit
are called spurs, right and the and and they're usually
put a few pictures in and I think Libby will

(01:02):
put them up on the on the website. And the
spurs from which the fruit actually arise are very thick,
very obvious, very swollen. At this time of the year,
you can see it. So if you ever need to
prune your trees, and that has to happen right now.
This is another little idea. Have a look at if
you can identify the spurs and the buds. The buds

(01:23):
are the ones that actually give you new twigs if
you like later season. Okay, but you do need to
prune those trees. But if you prune too many spurs off,
you don't get much fruit next year. So that's a
bit of a warning. Here's another thing. Apples come in
two different varieties ones that if you like, a spur

(01:43):
bearing variety or a tip bearing variety, And that means
that the spurs, if it's a spur bearing variety, the
spurs are all over the branches if you like. But
the tip bearing varieties only have the young fruit or
the new fruit on the tips of the branches. And
then and then you have to be extra careful that
you don't cut off all the tips. You know, that's it.

(02:06):
If you leave them there, cut some off. You need
to change your position off your tree. Sometimes it needs
to be a bit airy if you like, you know,
it needs to be spaces and all that, but be
aware of buds and tips. That is really really important.
Now now is the time to do it. And I
would always prune a tree if you like, with horizontal

(02:28):
branches going out, giving anybody and everything and weather and
wind a lot of space so that the tree can
dry out after a rainfall.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
That sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Aconomy, don't get rots and things like that. That's what
the other thing is that what you can do now
is think if you've got a new plant, for instance,
that you can think, how am I going to do this?
I'm going to train this plant, you know, I'm going
to nail it almost to a system. You can do
all that too, which is literally like a training or
a cordon or a fan or an s palier. You

(03:01):
can do it in all sorts of ways. No, here
comes to being a little tip. The and the Old
New Zealand Gardener did a fabulous article by Bill Brett
a couple of months ago which gives you all those
particular shapes and once you've seen those shapes, you can
actually copy that and make it up very simply. That
is really a nice way to go.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Okay, very good, thank you sir.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
There you are all right.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, you take have a good weekend and we will
catch up with you again very shortly. That is a
rude climb past our Man in the Garden.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News talks ' B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.