Apple Blossom

Hello

Today's post is just a quick one, here is my apple tree in its full glory.

Notice Buzz in the corner, he was either telling me that there was a baby starling in the tree or he thinks the flowers are pretty tooooo.

Unfortunately, too cold for the bees to visit today, on Sunday when it was warm the honey bees came for tea so hopefully, they will have pollinated the flowers so I will get apples.  Last year, only 3 apples due to the cold weather when the flowers were out and the bees were tucked up in their hives.

If you want your tree to be covered in blossom, summer prune it in late June.  Look at all this year's new growth, cut off 2/3 of each stem of new growth just above a bud, this is called spur pruning, it encourages the tree to  put all its resources into producing side (spur shoots) which is where next years blossom grows.  If you don't  spur prune, new shoots just keep growing long and leggy and hardly produce any blossom bearing side shoots, then the next year if they do produce any apples (you might get the odd one), they bend the long whippy branches down and they can break off.

Hope it warms up soon, the bees need all the help they can get.

cheers
Sharon