December jobs

Winter is definitely upon us and the heavy frosts we've had this week mean work in the garden is slowing. 

I've turned my attention to the 'structural' job of tree pruning.

We have 7 apple trees in need of a 'short back and sides', a plum tree which needs turning back into a plum tree, a small lop sided cherry and a large/massive ornamental purple tree (possibly plum/cherry decedent). Knowing not to touch the stone fruits at this time of year I set to the biggest of the trees first.

Here's the before pic:



Given that it blocks a lot of sunlight from the garden (it's on the south side), the advice of 'prune no more than 20%' had to be discarded.  I needed to tame this beast and would use all the shredded limbs to form the walkways between my veg beds. Larger limbs would form my log pile at the back of the garden to encourage even more wildlife.

This turned out to be a longer job than anticipated. Working well into the dark, this was as far as I got on day 1.



And so bright and early day 2 I set to the last part.



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