Pruning in July with Frances Tophill
Frances Tophill shows you how to boost your plants’ productivity and health with a high-summer cut
In July, although the solstice has passed , it still feels like the summer is building up. Everything is growing so fast and temperatures can be really high. Rainfall is also often low at this time of year, which does mean that our gardens can begin to look like they’re tiring. We often think of a ‘June gap’, but there can also be a ‘July gap’. The early-summer flowers are fading and the late-summer ones are yet to come.
But that makes this an easy time of year to get out the secateurs, loppers and shears and give things a bit of a tidy-up. Unruly climbers and shrubs can be snipped back into shape and the high-summer prune can begin for those of us keen to get on. Evergreens can be shaped (after making sure there’s no resident wildlife), giving new growth plenty of time to get ready for the cold of winter.
Also – because summer pruning reduces growth rather than encourages it, as in the case of winter pruning – non-fruiting shoots can be removed from trained fruit such as pears. See my step-by-step project, below, where I explain how to prune a wall-trained cordon pear.
More pruning advice:
Plants to prune now
Midsummer is a good time for all of these jobs, but the month of July is ideal – the fresh new growth that follows from these cuts will have plenty of time to toughen up before the first frosts of winter arrive.
Wisteria
Prune off all the long, whippy stems now, to about seven buds. A harder prune follows in January or February.
Plums
Cut diseased, dead or dying stems from established trees back to a healthy bud. Be aware you will probably remove some fruit.
Bay
If you keep your bay tree clipped, prune it now, cutting back to a bud facing in the direction you want it to grow. Dry the clippings for cooking.
Philadelphus
Prune straight after flowering. Remove up to a third of the stems at the base to allow light and air into the centre of the shrub.
Avoid pruning
- Shrubby cornus: Cutting these back now will deprive you of lovely, colourful stems in the winter. Instead, do this in March.
- Willow: Similar to cornus, pruning now will remove winter colour. You’ll also have no stems for planting whips in the dormant season.
- Parrotia: As with all plants grown for their autumn colour, preserve the foliage for a vibrant display in just a few months.
- Autumn raspberries: Not to be confused with summer-fruiting cultivars, which can be pruned back just after they have fruited. Confusing the two different types of raspberry plant could mean no autumn crop to eat.
Step-by-step: Pruning a wall-trained cordon pear
Fruit trees like apples and pears can put on lots of vigorous growth in summer, and this in turn can cause congestion, stopping the fruits from receiving enough sunlight, reducing air flow and diverting the plant’s energy into foliage. This is particularly a problem with trees that are trained into shapes like espaliers, fans or cordons, which can quickly lose their compact shape and become overcrowded, so it’s a good idea to give them their principal pruning in the summer, when the cuts you make will restrict, rather than encourage further growth. This is the opposite of bush forms, which usually receive their main cut in the winter.
Step 1
Feel the stems to double-check that they are firm up to about a third of the way up. Then look for stems that are longer than 20cm. Anything shorter will likely produce fruit, and should be left alone.
Step 2
Cut with sharp secateurs to just above the third set of leaves, counting from where the fresh, new shoot meets older wood. If possible, cut at an angle – this stops water from collecting on the wounded wood and causing disease.
Step 3
Remove any vigorous growth shooting from below the graft union when pruning any grafted fruit tree. You can see the graft by a bulge in the main stem. Anything growing from beneath that point will be from the root stock.
After pruning any fruit tree, it’s a good idea to spend a little time thinning the fruit. Removing a little fruit is a really good way of relieving the tree’s nutrient and weight burden. Not thinning now might result in stems snapping under the weight of the ripening fruit. Also, the tree will be forced to spread water and nutrients available to it more thinly, resulting in smaller and poorer individual fruits. Keep one or two fruits in any cluster, and the crop at the end of the season will be much healthier.
Also prune this way:
- Trained apples can be pruned like this, though this will usually be a month or so later. Delaying until late August reduces secondary growth from the cuts, helping to stop new foliage from covering up the fruits from sunlight and slowing down the ripening process. How to prune apple trees in summer.
- Trained cherries will be pruned in the same way, too. However, make sure you wait until the cherry harvest is over, and that you’ve left a little grace for the birds to have their fill. Do this no later than the end of August.
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