fruit trees

[Denise Clere]

orange & tangelo (they have fruit on them now),when's the best time to prune them & how much is too much to take off ? thanks,Denise

[GFRfan]

Anytime the tree is dormant. Between January and mid April. Unless you live in Australia. Pruning orange trees should be confined to trimming extremely long branches that become untidy or new branches that cross over others, they do not require any special pruning to encourage flowers as these will be produced naturally on new shoot tips and any wood old enough to bear them. You should aim to keep branches fairly short so that they will eventually become strong enough to carry the weight of half a dozen fruit of 6 oz. You should also be aiming to keep the centre of the tree quite open as this will allow plenty of light in to the tree. Don't know much about Tangelo but I'd imagine it would be handled the same.

Here's a couple of helpful links. If you're on dialup it may take a bit to load.

[<jmreed441]