Why winter is the right time

An apple tree in winter is a bare, quiet thing — and that is exactly what makes it easy to read. With no leaves in the way you can follow a branch from trunk to tip, see where light is being blocked, and spot the cracks, cankers and dead stubs that were hidden all summer. Between leaf fall and bud burst, roughly late November to early March, the tree is dormant, and the cuts you make cause it far less strain.

Timing matters more than most people realise. Pruning in early autumn, before the leaves have dropped, robs the tree of the energy it is still storing and can leave it less hardy going into the cold. Wait until the leaves are down, then pick a mild, dry spell when the temperature is above freezing. January and February are ideal. Leave the secateurs in the shed during hard frost: the wood is brittle and snaps, and wounds seal slowly in the cold.

Know what you are pruning

Apple varieties bear fruit in different ways, and pruning against the grain is how gardeners end up with leafy, handsome trees that never crop.

• Spur bearers such as Cox's Orange Pippin and Egremont Russet carry fruit on short, stubby spurs on wood two years old and older. They respond well to thinning and shortening, and will crop again on the spurs that remain.
• Tip bearers such as Discovery and Worcester Pearmain crop at the ends of one-year-old shoots. Prune these hard and you are cutting off next season's fruit. Treat them lightly: remove only dead, diseased or rubbing wood.
• Partial tip bearers such as Bramley's Seedling sit somewhere in between and will forgive a little more.

If you are unsure which sort you have, prune conservatively for a season and watch where the fruit forms. The tree will tell you.

Start with the three Ds

Whatever the variety, every winter prune begins the same way. Work steadily through the tree with sharp tools and take out, first, anything that is:

• Dead — grey, brittle, snapping cleanly with no green under the bark. Cut back to healthy wood.
• Diseased — canker lesions, sunken or cracked patches, dying spurs. Cut well below the affected area into clean wood, and wipe the blade with methylated spirits before you move to the next tree.
• Damaged — storm-snapped limbs, bark stripped by mowers or rabbits.

Then deal with branches that are crossing and rubbing. Two limbs grinding together open wounds that never heal properly, and they give canker an easy way in. Keep the stronger, better-placed branch and remove the other cleanly. Take out, too, any shoots growing straight down or back in towards the centre of the tree.

Thin the crowded growth

The aim is a tree you could, almost, throw a hat through: an open, goblet-shaped centre that lets light reach the fruit and air move freely through the canopy. Damp, still air encourages scab and canker, so good airflow is the cheapest disease control there is.

Stand back and look for the branches crowding the middle. Remove the weakest and the most inward-growing first. On established spur-bearing trees, shorten congested spur systems and thin the clusters of spurs so those remaining have room to swell. Take out the strong, upright water shoots that sprout from the top of thick limbs — they shade the centre and rarely carry fruit.

On a young tree, aim to build a framework of four to six well-spaced main branches. Shorten the previous year's growth on the leaders by about a third, cutting to an outward-facing bud, and leave the rest to fill out. As a rough rule, never remove more than a quarter to a third of the canopy in a single winter; a hard cut pushes a mass of leafy growth at the expense of fruit.

Making the cut

Good pruning is mostly good cutting.

• Use bypass secateurs for shoots up to finger thickness, loppers for anything up to about 4cm, and a pruning saw for larger limbs. Anvil secateurs crush the wood.
• Cut just above an outward-facing bud, about 5mm clear, at a slight angle sloping away from the bud so rain runs off.
• On a bigger branch, cut back to the branch collar — the slight swelling where the branch meets its parent. Do not leave a stub and do not cut flush; that collar is the tree's own healing tissue.
• For heavy limbs, use the three-cut method: a shallow cut underneath, a cut from above a little further out to bring the branch down, then a clean final cut at the collar. This stops the weight of the branch tearing a strip of bark from the trunk.

Keep blades sharp and clean between trees. There is no need for wound paint — the modern advice is to leave a clean cut to seal itself.

When to stop, and what comes next

Stop while the tree still looks slightly under-pruned. You can always take more next winter; you cannot put it back. Leave the tree balanced and open, clear the prunings away from the base where they would shelter pests, and spread a light mulch of well-rotted compost around the tree — but not touching the trunk.

Then let it grow. Pruning is a slow conversation with a tree, renewed each winter, and the rewards arrive in baskets.