[Shambayango]

We've had 3 dwarf fruit trees in pots for 3 years, a plum, apple and pear tree.  I didn't know about putting sticky moth tape around the trunk of the trees, but anyway, we moved them to be under our glass Veranda to overwinter, together with our 4 Brugmansia trees and then covered them with zip up fleece bags so the moths would have been able to climb up the inside of the bags.

I'm a complete green horn when it comes to pruning fruit trees as I don't know how to recognise what is a lead bud and what is a fruiting spear, and, year before last, I pruned them right back and then didn't get any flowers on anything and the wingless moth had attacked the plum tree so it was full of caterpillars.  So I cut off all the affected leaves and got rid of the caterpillars.

Then last year I didn't prune anything, as I was too scared to do this and, again, we overwintered them under the veranda but we didn't put fleece bags around them, we just insulated the roots by a thick layer of scrutch (straw).  This year, we had a lot of flowers on all 3 trees but, as there was so much rain, there were no bees to pollinate them.

The pear tree had hundred of flowers on it and as I was worried that no bees were going to pollinate the flowers, I got my old blusher brush and tried to cross-pollinate the flowers.  We then had some nice sunny weather so we moved the 3 trees out from under our glass Veranda into their usual positions.  Then, alas another bout of rain came with strong winds and all the pear flowers were blown off whether or not my pollination had worked.

However, there are a few plums forming and quite a few apples too.

I've taken off the straw, dug out the top layer of soil and replaced it with new soil mixed with chicken manure pellets and blood and bone meal.  I intend to water them with tomato feed once they have dried out.

However, what I need to know is how to recognise what is a fruit spear and what is a leaf bud on plum, apple and pear trees please.