
Whenever you prune in winter, it encourages new growth the following year and if you were only ever doing this then your trees would become dominated by vegetative growth with very little fruit. Veteran trees require a little more know-how and there are some very informative videos on-line if you want to restore old fruit trees. For trees that already have an established framework of branches then winter pruning is necessary only to maintain the shape and balance. If your trees are still young, they will need some formative pruning in the winter to achieve an open network of branches. Fruit tree pruning may be considered by some to be an art form, but how you prune depends mainly on the age of your tree.
