Start with Safety and a Thorough Clearance

Before you touch a single branch, spend a day simply looking and clearing. Old orchards hide trip hazards: brambles, nettles, fallen limbs, half-buried wire and rotten fruit. Wear sturdy boots, thick gloves and eye protection. Work in dry weather so the ground is firm and you can see what you are doing.

Begin by removing rubbish and diseased debris. Rake up fallen apples, especially any that are shrivelled or mummified — these harbour brown rot and scab. Cut back brambles and nettles around the trunks with loppers or a brush cutter, but leave a metre-wide circle clear around each tree. If you find dead wood on the ground, burn it or take it away; do not compost diseased material. Create simple paths so you can move a wheelbarrow and later a press. This first clearance might take a weekend, but it will make every later job easier.

Assess Each Tree’s Health and Structure

Now walk from tree to tree with a notebook. You are looking for three things: dead wood, disease, and congestion. Dead branches are brittle, have no buds, and often show peeling bark or fungal brackets. Diseased wood may have cankers, sunken patches, or orange jelly-like growths. Congestion is where branches cross, rub, or grow inward.

• Dead or dying branches: mark them with ribbon. These come out first.
• Crossing and rubbing branches: one of each pair must go. Choose the one growing outward and upward.
• Water shoots: those vigorous, vertical stems on old limbs. Remove some, but leave a few if the tree needs new framework.
• The graft union: check it is not buried. If it is, carefully remove soil to expose it.

Also look at the overall shape. A neglected apple tree is often a thicket of spindly growth with a few heavy old limbs. Your goal over several years is to open the centre so light and air can reach the fruit. Do not try to fix everything at once.

The Art of Gradual Pruning

Old apple trees react badly to drastic pruning. Removing more than a quarter of the canopy in one winter can shock them into sending a forest of water shoots and producing no fruit for years. Spread renovation over three or four winters.

Start with the three Ds: dead, diseased and damaged. Cut these back to a healthy branch or the trunk, using the three-cut method for anything thicker than your wrist. Then remove crossing and rubbing branches. Then thin out congested growth, always cutting to an outward-facing bud or branch. Use sharp bypass secateurs and a pruning saw — clean cuts heal faster. Do not paint the wounds; let them seal naturally.

In the first winter, do no more than clear dead wood and one or two major congested limbs. The following year, repeat. By year three you can begin shortening the oldest limbs to encourage new fruiting spurs. Always stand back and look before you cut.

Feed and Mulch Without Overdoing It

Old orchard trees are often starved because grass and weeds compete for water and nutrients. Clear a circle around each trunk, one to one and a half metres across, and keep it weed-free. In early spring, spread a five-centimetre layer of well-rotted manure or garden compost over the circle, keeping it a hand’s width away from the trunk. This feeds gently and improves soil structure.

If growth is very weak, add a handful of blood, fish and bone per square metre. Avoid high-nitrogen fertilisers, which push soft, sappy growth that aphids love and that will not bear fruit. Water newly cleared trees in dry spells for the first two summers. Mulch again in autumn if the soil is poor. This slow feeding, repeated over seasons, does more good than any sudden boost.

Thin Fruit and Harvest Wisely

After a few years of care, a revived tree may set a heavy crop. In late June or July, thin the fruitlets. Remove any damaged or misshapen ones first, then leave one or two apples per cluster, spaced about 10–15cm apart. This prevents branches snapping under weight and helps the tree produce a crop next year instead of biennial bearing.

Pick eating apples when they part easily from the branch with a gentle twist. Leave cider apples a week or two longer to develop sugar and tannin. Store sound fruit in a cool, dark, rodent-free shed. Use windfalls and bruised apples for cider — but wash them first and discard any that are mouldy.

Small-Batch Cider from Your Own Apples

You do not need a commercial press. A clean bucket, a stout piece of wood for crushing, and a small basket press will do for a few demijohns. Crush the apples into a pulp, press the juice, and strain it through a clean cloth. Measure the gravity with a hydrometer; aim for 1.045–1.060. If it is lower, add a little sugar syrup.

Ferment in a food-grade bucket or demijohn with an airlock at 15–20°C. You can use a cider yeast or rely on wild yeasts, but wild fermentation is slower and less predictable. After two to four weeks, rack the cider off the sediment into a clean vessel. Mature for three to six months, then bottle in strong bottles with a little priming sugar if you want sparkle. Keep notes on varieties and blends — every old orchard makes a different cider, and that is half the pleasure.