Pruned pear orchard one row at a time, with one person on each side of the trees. Sprayed secateurs with steriliser - Propellar, between each tree we cut to prevent the spread of disease. The aim was to cut off any dieback from various reasons - disease (e.g. canker), broken or dead - cut to a healthy section.
Some of these pear trees also has had top work done to them - trained in the spindle way, new grafts have been made to regenerate some of the branches that had been cut off or died back for some reason, to give them back a good shape again. Two grafts are done on a stump branch - one would be cut out, but the stump takes better when there are two on either side of it.
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| Photo 1: Pear tree with top work grafting done to it. Bound by wax and string. |
It gives an idea of how certain cultivars grow, bearing in mind that growth can be affected by other factors too. Does the ones that look good taste good though?
Tied back vines, making sure the end of vines were supported by wires, it involved threading the long pieces through the top wires if they haven't made it there already (wires are on both side of the vine), if the wires didn't catch them when tightened/ fallen over. Also trying to separate and decongest stems that were creeping into each other laterally and training them back upwards. We were using a nifty compressed cardboard clip made by Ligapal to close the gaps of the wire and to secure the vine stems in where necessary. The branches were very brittle and kept breaking - not sure this is the best method, but Bernard explained that they use to hand prune when there was more staff, but they now use this method to deal with the lack of resource and time.
The vines have set fruit, it would seem the best way is to pull off foliage around them so they are as exposed to the sun and easily accessible as possible, & for spraying and ventilation etc. to help reduce the risk of botrytis. Bernard says that he will be going over the foliage with a hedgecutter top and sides to cut them back. It has been know in vineyards that they use a blower to blow away the dead petals once the vine has set fruit, again to reduce the risk of Botrytis.