If you are lucky enough to have apple or pear trees in your garden, you may appreciate the fruit that you can collect, come the summertime but you do need to do some maintenance to ensure that they keep bearing good quality fruit.
Trees that are not pruned become less productive and congested with old branches. Ideally, you want to achieve an open goblet shaped tree that has 4 or 5 main branches. Pruning is often done differently for newer trees (less than a couple of years old) to how you prune older ones. It is important that when pruning a tree you know what you are doing as if done incorrectly you could damage or kill the tree. If you are in any doubt then you may wish to call in an expert gardener who has experience in pruning fruit trees. Pruning should be carried out when the tree is dormant, between leaf fall and bud burst (usually between November and early March).
Make sure that you always use sharp cutting tools and that you remove any dead or diseased branches first. On an older tree, start by removing branches that are unlikely to get any light so unlikely to bear good fruit.