Wednesday 13 August 2008

Our apple tree

Its been very, very windy the past couple of days and we've had a lot of heavy rain. It doesn't feel like summer at all and we have spent the most of the days inside.

From time to time I look out of the kitchen window at my apple tree which I am worried might be about to fall over. It is about five years old and for some reason has grown very unevenly with all the branches growing out to one side. I don't know why this has happened, its in a relatively sheltered area and the direction of growth is towards the north east so its not growing towards the light.

Its not easy to see from the photograph how unbalanced it is. Although its been like this for a while it wasn't until the apples started growing and the branches were carrying the extra weight that it started leaning.

Yesterday I picked quite a few apples from the ends of the branches and pruned some of the branches. I know its completely the wrong time to prune but I wanted to get rid of some of the weight. There are still a lot of apples left on the tree.


Any advice on this? Should I pick the rest of the apples? prune the tree harder? now or later?

If I get a stake and pull the tree more upright, the branches will still be all on one side, does this mean I should remove some of these in the hope that it will grow more on the other side?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

As it was stay-at-home weather this afternoon, I have been busy with the apples

and a few frozen blackberries left in the freezer,

making this.

As the apples were picked early, I wasn't sure if they would store well so I stewed them. They cooked up well and we will enjoy them in the winter.

1 comment:

Simply Authentic said...

Wow! Looks great! I have no good advice on the apple tree though. That does seem strange that they would grow all to one side. I wonder why that is.