January Winter
Deep dormancy. Take the structural cuts on apples and pears on a frost-free day, collect scion wood while you work, and check stakes and ties before the winter gales.
A working almanac · temperate pome & stone fruit
The small orchard,
month by month
Four decisions carry a handful of fruit trees: the rootstock underneath them, the season you cut in, how early you notice trouble, and the day you pick. This is a reference for all four.
- ScopeApples, pears, quince, plums, cherries, apricots and peaches, in rows under fifty trees.
- HemisphereMonth names follow the northern year. Shift everything by six months in the south.
- MethodPractice, not prescription. Every window below is a cue to go and check the tree.
№ 01
The seasonal wheel
Turn the dial to any month for the jobs that actually fall due in it.
- Winter
- Spring
- Summer
- Autumn
February Winter
Finish dormant pruning before the buds move. Plant bare-root trees whenever the soil is workable and not frozen, firming them in and watering even in the cold.
March Spring
Buds break. Mulch a clear ring around each young tree without touching the trunk, and graft while the rootstock is stirring. Scab spores start releasing on wet days.
April Spring
Blossom on plums and cherries, then on pears and apples. Write down the full-bloom date for every tree — the harvest calculator below runs on it. Watch the frost forecast.
May Spring
Petal fall. Hang codling moth traps now so you catch the start of flight, and begin pruning plums and cherries once they are growing strongly.
June Summer
The natural fruit drop thins part of the crop for you. Finish the job by hand on apples, leaving one fruit per cluster, and water new trees deeply rather than often.
July Summer
Summer-prune trained apples and pears as this year's shoots stiffen at the base. Early cherries and apricots ripen; net or pick promptly, because neither waits.
August Summer
Main stone-fruit harvest. Pick plums over several passes rather than stripping a tree, and keep the grass short so windfalls are easy to see and clear.
September Autumn
Early and mid-season apples and pears. Pick pears hard and ripen them indoors; test apples by pip colour and by whether the stalk lifts cleanly with a twist.
October Autumn
Late apples for the store. Pick dry fruit, handle it like eggs, and store only sound specimens. Collect mummified fruit and windfalls on every pass.
November Autumn
Leaf fall. Rake, shred or mow the fallen leaves so they rot before bud-break — this is the single biggest cut in next year's scab. Bare-root planting begins.
December Winter
Dormancy returns. Inspect trunks and limbs for canker and cut it out in dry weather, take hardwood cuttings, and plan the spacing of next season's row.
№ 02
Choosing rootstock
What the root decides, the three site facts that choose it, and the common stocks.
Choose the root for the site, not for the catalogue photograph
A fruit tree is two plants. The rootstock underneath sets final size, how soon the tree bears, how deeply it roots and much of its disease behaviour; the grafted variety above sets the fruit.
Dwarfing apple stocks are precocious and easy to pick from, but they need permanent support and steady water, and they lose badly to grass competition. Semi-dwarfing stocks stand alone in decent soil and suit a garden row at three and a half to four and a half metres. Vigorous stocks make long-lived standards for a grazed orchard, but can take seven years to crop.
Three site facts, first
- Soil depthShallow ground rules out the most dwarfing stocks, whose brittle, shallow roots cannot forage far enough for water.
- DrainageWet, heavy ground invites collar rot. Pick a stock that tolerates it, or plant on a low, wide mound so the graft stays dry.
- Wind, and a postAn exposed row needs anchorage. Decide honestly whether you will keep a stake in for the whole life of the tree.
| Stock | For | Height | Support | Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M.27 | Apple | 1.5–2 m | Permanent | Stepovers and pots; unforgiving of drought |
| M.9 | Apple | 2.5–3 m | Permanent | Precocious and heavy-cropping; fire-blight prone |
| G.41 | Apple | 2.5–3 m | Permanent | M.9 size, resists fire blight and collar rot |
| MM.106 | Apple | 4–4.5 m | First years | Free-standing; dislikes badly drained soil |
| MM.111 | Apple | 5–6 m | None | Drought-tolerant, deep-rooting, slow to bear |
| Quince A | Pear | 3–4 m | First years | Check variety compatibility; interstem may be needed |
| OHxF 87 | Pear | 4–5 m | None | Well anchored, tolerant of fire blight |
| Gisela 5 | Cherry | 2.5–3 m | Permanent | Very precocious; thin or the fruit runs small |
| St. Julien A | Plum | 3.5–4.5 m | First years | The general-purpose garden stock for stone fruit |
Where fire blight or collar rot is a known local problem, the Geneva apple series was bred for exactly that and earns its extra cost. With pears on quince, check compatibility first: several varieties will not take directly and need a compatible interstem.
№ 03
Pruning by season
Two rules, the four cuts they are made of, and the window each species wants.
Winter cuts push, summer cuts restrain
Two rules carry most of the work. First: a dormant cut invigorates and a late-summer cut does not. Cutting in winter concentrates the tree's stored reserves into fewer buds, so spring answers with strong shoots; the same cut made after extension growth has stopped simply removes leaf area. Second: the calendar belongs to the species, not to the gardener.
Apples and pears take their structural pruning in late winter, near bud-break rather than in a hard freeze. Work in order — dead, damaged and diseased wood first, then crossing branches, then thinning so light reaches every fruiting spur. Take no more than a quarter of the canopy in one year.
Stone fruit is the exception: plums, cherries, apricots and peaches are pruned in the growing season on a dry day, because dormant wounds invite silver leaf and bacterial canker.
The four cuts
- Thinning cutA shoot taken right out at its base. Light in, no new vigour: the cut that holds a tree at the size it already is.
- Heading cutA shoot shortened to a bud. It wakes the buds below and thickens the growth there, which builds a young framework and ruins a crowded one.
- At the collarJust outside the swollen ring at a branch base. A stub dies back; a flush cut removes the tissue that would have healed it. Skip wound paint.
- To an outward budThe bud left at the tip aims next year's shoot, so pick one pointing away from the centre and the tree opens itself.
| Trees | Cut | Window | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple, pear | Structural | Late winter | Framework is visible; regrowth is strongest |
| Apple, pear — trained | Restraining | Mid to late summer | Holds the form, colours fruit, builds fruit buds |
| Plum, cherry, apricot | All of it | Late spring to midsummer | Wounds close fast; canker and silver leaf are dormant |
| Peach, nectarine | Renewal | Bud swell | Fruits on one-year wood, so new shoots are the crop |
| Quince, medlar | Light thinning | Late winter | Slow growers that resent heavy cutting |
№ 04
Pest and disease notes
Four troubles worth knowing by name, and one walk round the rows for the rest.
Diagnose in autumn, prevent in spring
Most orchard trouble is diagnosed from the ground in October and prevented the following spring. Read the fallen leaves and the fruit lying in the grass before reaching for anything else.
Apple scab
Olive-brown blotches on leaves; corky, cracked spots on fruit.
It overwinters in fallen leaves. Rake, shred or mow them so they rot before bud-break, and where it is chronic, plant resistant varieties and open the canopy so leaves dry fast after rain.
Brown rot
Soft brown fruit ringed with buff pustules; shrivelled mummies.
It spreads from mummified fruit left hanging. Pick every mummy off in winter, take the drops away, and thin the crop so fruits do not touch on the branch.
Codling moth
A small hole in the fruit, plugged with dark frass.
The larvae bore into the core. A pheromone trap hung at petal fall shows when flight begins: treatments timed to egg hatch work, calendar sprays largely do not.
Fire blight
Blackened shoots, the tips bent into a shepherd's crook.
Cut twenty to thirty centimetres below the damage in dry weather, disinfect between cuts, and go easy on nitrogen, which makes exactly the soft growth it prefers.
| Look at | When | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Fallen leaves | November | Next spring's scab load — mow or rake them so they rot before bud-break |
| Fruit still hanging | Dec to Feb | Brown rot mummies — pick every one off and take it out of the orchard |
| Trunk and main limbs | A dry winter day | Sunken, cracked canker — cut back to clean wood and burn what you take off |
| Pheromone trap | Petal fall onward | Codling moth flight has begun — time what you do to egg hatch, not to the calendar |
| Shoot tips | Late spring | Blackened crooks mean fire blight — cut well below in dry weather, sterilising between |
| Grass under the trees | Every pass | Windfalls, vole runs and rubbing ties — clear the drops, keep the trunk collar bare |
Canker, woolly aphid, voles and deer all reward the same three habits: walk the rows often, act on the first sign rather than the worst one, and keep the trunk clear of mulch, grass and ties.
№ 05
Harvest-window calculator
Counts forward from full bloom, the most reliable predictor a grower has.
Choose a fruit, enter its full-bloom date, and the window appears here.
Days from full bloom holds steady for a given variety on a given site, but moves by roughly a week with the season and with crop load. Treat the result as the day to start testing fruit, not as a harvest date.
№ 06
Method
How these figures were set
Rootstock heights are the sizes reached by a well-fed tree under normal pruning on average soil; poor ground gives less, and a vigorous variety on the same stock gives more. The day counts in the calculator are typical ranges for each class of fruit rather than for one named variety. Keep your own bloom and picking records for two or three seasons and your numbers will beat any table.