Winter pruning helps keep your fruit trees in order
It doesn’t take long for an apple tree to go feral. Left to its own devices, an apple has no desire to be a neat thing with well-placed branches. Unpruned apples produce smaller fruit, are often more susceptible to disease and start fruiting biennially (a natural way of dealing with pest and disease: less fruit, less infection). Winter pruning allows you to claw back a tree into a more ordered manner.