Why winter is the right moment to prune

An apple tree pruned while it is dormant will forgive you almost anything. Between leaf fall and bud burst — roughly mid-November to the end of February in most of the UK — the tree is resting, there is no foliage in the way, and you can see the whole framework of branches clearly. Wounds made now callus over neatly when growth restarts in spring, and the tree's energy goes into the shoots you have chosen to keep rather than into wood you were going to remove anyway.

Pick a dry day when the temperature is above about 3°C. Cutting in a hard frost can shatter the wood and leave dieback behind, and leaving it too late — once the buds are swelling and the sap is rising — sets the tree back. Finish before the end of February, which also keeps you well clear of the nesting season.

Read the tree before you make a single cut

Look first for the fruit buds. On apples these are plump, rounded and slightly furry, sitting on short stubby shoots called spurs, usually on wood two years old or more. Leaf buds, by contrast, lie flatter against the stem and are pointed. Once you can tell them apart, you can prune with confidence instead of guesswork.

Next, work out how your particular tree fruits. Most garden apples — 'Discovery', 'James Grieve', 'Katy' — crop mainly on spurs, so shortening shoots encourages more of them. Partial tip-bearers such as 'Bramley's Seedling', 'Cox's Orange Pippin' and 'Egremont Russet' carry a good share of their crop at the ends of last year's shoots, so tip those lightly and leave more young growth in place. If you are unsure, prune modestly for two seasons and watch where the fruit appears.

Finally, picture the shape you want: an open goblet with a clear centre, branches well spaced and reaching outwards. Air and light reaching the middle of the tree is what ripens fruit and dries leaves, which in turn reduces scab and canker.

The three Ds — and the branches that rub

Start with the cuts that need no judgement at all:

• Dead wood — brittle, grey and hollow-sounding. Cut back to firm, pale-green wood.
• Diseased wood — canker shows as sunken, cracked or oozing patches. Cut well below the damage into clean wood and wipe your blades with methylated spirits between cuts.
• Damaged branches — snapped, storm-battered or half-torn limbs.
• Crossing and rubbing branches — these wound each other and trap damp, so take out the weaker one.
• Narrow, tight-angled forks — where bark is trapped between two limbs, the join will split under a heavy crop.

On an established tree, aim to remove no more than about a quarter of the canopy in any one winter. If a tree has been neglected for years, spread the work over two or three seasons rather than shocking it in one go.

Making a clean cut

Use sharp bypass secateurs for anything up to about 2cm thick and a pruning saw for anything larger. Blunt tools crush the wood and invite infection, so sharpen before you start.

For a thinning cut, trace the shoot back to an outward-facing bud and cut 3–5mm above it, slanting gently away from the bud so water runs off the cut surface rather than into it. For a whole branch, cut back to the branch collar — the slight swelling where the limb meets its parent. Leave that collar intact; cutting flush removes the tree's own healing tissue. Never paint the wound. If you are taking off a heavy limb, make a small undercut first, then cut from above, so the bark does not tear as the branch falls.

Young trees, old trees and crowded spurs

A young tree needs only a light hand. Choose three or four well-placed branches to form the frame, shorten the leader by about a third to an outward bud, and remove little else. Over-pruning a young apple simply produces a forest of leafy shoots and no fruit.

On a mature tree, concentrate on thinning rather than shortening. Where spurs have become bunched and congested along a branch, rub out or snip away some of them so the remaining fruits have room to swell — crowded spurs give you a crop of small apples and a tangle of weak growth. Also remove any strong upright shoots growing from the top of a branch; they shade the centre and rarely carry good fruit.

Leave a little back for the wildlife

Winter pruning is naturally wildlife-friendly because it happens when nothing is nesting. Do keep one or two old, storm-damaged branches on a mature tree if they are safe and well away from paths, and leave a modest stack of prunings in a quiet corner rather than shredding the lot. Dead and decaying wood is home to beetles, solitary bees and the hoverflies that pollinate your blossom and eat aphids in summer.

Chipped prunings make a fine mulch around the base of the tree, though leave a gap of 10cm or so around the trunk, and do not compost material carrying canker. Skip the nitrogen-rich feed, which pushes soft leafy growth at the expense of fruit, and let the tree settle into its new shape. A quick look in July — removing any water shoots that have sprinted away — will keep the work you did this winter looking tidy all year.