Pruning an apple or pear tree

How to do it

1. 1Prune between leaf fall and bud burst, but not on a day of hard frost.
2. 2Take out the three Ds first — dead, damaged, diseased — then whatever crosses or grows back into the centre.
3. 3Work towards an open goblet: light and air in the middle is what ripens the fruit and keeps scab down.
4. 4Never take more than about a fifth of the canopy in one winter. Hard pruning answers back with a thicket of vertical water shoots the following summer.
5. 5Find out which sort you have: most apples fruit on spurs on older wood, but tip-bearers such as 'Discovery' and 'Worcester Pearmain' fruit at the ends of last year's shoots and lose the crop if those are shortened.
6. 6Prune plums, cherries and the other stone fruits in summer instead, never in winter, because of silver leaf.

Plants that use it

Their calendar has a job that points to this guide.