There is a moment in early spring when an orchard seems to hold its breath. The buds on the old Cox's are still tight, the grass underfoot is only just beginning to stir, and then one mild morning you notice the first green tip on a spur you pruned back in January. That is the signal to get moving. The jobs you do between now and blossom will decide how the season unfolds, so here is how to set your trees up properly.

Begin with a slow walk round the trees

Before you touch a tool, put your hands on every tree. Winter wind and frost do quiet damage, and spring is when you find it.

• Check ties and stakes. A tie that was snug in autumn is now tight around swelling bark. Loosen it so you can slip a finger behind. Retie in a figure-of-eight so the trunk is held but not strangled, and make sure the stake is still firm in the ground.
• Inspect guards. Rabbit and deer guards often rub against the trunk once growth starts. Lift them clear, remove any debris lodged inside, and check for ring-barking by voles at soil level.
• Look for canker. Sunken, cracked patches of dead bark, often around old pruning cuts, should be cut out now while the tree can heal quickly. Cut back to clean, pale wood and leave the wound unpainted.
• Test the roots. Gently rock a young tree. If the base moves in the soil, firm it back in with your heel and water it well.

Young trees are the ones that need you most. A maiden planted last autumn has one spring to establish itself properly, and that spring lasts only a few weeks.

Mulch the soil, not the trunk

Apples are hungry plants, but they feed through the soil, not through a bag of fertiliser thrown at the trunk. A generous mulch in March or early April feeds the tree slowly and keeps moisture in the ground through summer.

Clear weeds and grass from a ring at least a metre across, pulling rather than digging so you don't slice through shallow roots. Then spread well-rotted manure or garden compost about 5–8cm deep, keeping it 10cm clear of the trunk. Piling mulch against bark softens it and invites rot. If your growth is weak — short, thin new shoots under 20cm — a light dressing of general-purpose organic fertiliser will help. A little wood ash around the drip line supplies potash and suits fruiting well, but use it sparingly, as it raises soil pH. Avoid rich nitrogen feeds, which push sappy growth that aphids adore.

Finish the pruning before the sap rises

Any structural pruning should be done and dusted by the time buds break, usually mid to late March depending on where you garden. Later cuts bleed sap and weaken the tree.

Take out crossing and rubbing branches, dead wood, and any shoot growing straight up through the middle of the tree. On an established tree, shorten or remove water shoots — the vigorous, upright stems that crowd the centre and shade the fruiting spurs. On trained forms such as cordons, fans and espaliers, shorten new side shoots back to three or four buds and tie in the leaders. Don't over-tidy, though. Fruit comes from older wood, and a tree stripped to bare branches will sulk for a year.

Watch the blossom for pests and disease

Blossom time is the orchard's most delicate fortnight, and the key rule is simple: never spray an insecticide on open blossom. Bees, hoverflies and solitary bees do the work you need most.

Instead, walk the trees and act by hand:

• Rosy and woolly aphid cluster on shoot tips and in bark crevices. Squash small colonies or wash them off with a firm jet of water.
• Apple blossom weevil caps flowers so they never open. Look for buds with a brown, glued shut appearance and pick them off.
• Winter moth caterpillars skeletonise leaves in spring. Tits and blue tits clear most of them if you hang a nest box nearby in February.
• Scab and powdery mildew both start in damp, crowded growth. Open up the canopy, rake up fallen leaves and bin them rather than composting.

Encourage earwigs by hanging an inverted flowerpot stuffed with straw in the branches. They look alarming and do excellent work eating aphids after dark.

Pollination and frost protection

Most apples need a partner, so check your flowering groups. Early varieties such as Discovery overlap with mid-season types like Cox's Orange Pippin and Egremont Russet. Bramley's Seedling is triploid — it needs two compatible neighbours and cannot pollinate anything itself. If space is tight, a crab apple in a large pot will do the job.

Late frost is the orchardist's real enemy. Keep fleece to hand for wall-trained trees, move potted apples into shelter when a cold night is forecast, and remember that damp soil holds warmth better than dry soil, so water thoroughly if March turns dry. For a small tree, a soft brush dabbed from flower to flower in the middle of a sunny day will set fruit where bees are scarce.

Finally, keep watering new plantings through any dry spell — around ten to twenty litres a week for a first-year tree. Then put your feet up and let the blossom do its work. Your reward comes in June, when the June drop thins the crop for you and you can judge how much to take off by hand, leaving one or two fruitlets per cluster spaced a hand's width apart.