Hold light at the fore front as you prune. Taming big trees Let the light shine in for plenty of productive, fruitful wood Its makes a huge difference, when you understand the framework and how its made up. Run through this sequence every time you are with your trees. This simple task is a valuable practice if pruning addles you.
From there identify the scaffolds (the main branches), the secondary branches and finally the laterals (the fruits are hanging from these). Rather than reading about it – go out to your tree and work out what is what.
The scaffolds and trunk make up the framework of the tree. This makes for a lovely low centre of gravity and lower trees that are easier to birdnet, pick and prune. The end goal is 4 – 6 evenly spaced main branches – these are called scaffolds and ideally come off the trunk at about 1m off the ground. A little trim here and there in the first few years creates a balanced, strong framework that survives big winds and heavy crops and lets the light shine in to stimulate fruitful shoots. In an ideal world this shaping is begun at planting. It best suits their spreading tendencies. I like to create a vase shape for stonefruits. Don’t try to shape a tree to look like a picture, rather aim for excellent light distribution and a good fit for the space your tree occupies. Pictures are too tidy, but a useful spring board. My little pruning book sets it out in full. In these few short paragraphs I can only give but an over view. Know that you will have many questions as you prune. Counter intuitive, but oh so true, and not easily done when faced with a big tree that you’d like nothing more than to bring to its knees! When trees are lacking vigour, cut them right back to inspire strong growth next season. Here’s the thing – every cut you make elicits a response from the tree. Its heaps easier to clearly see where light needs to penetrate with all the leaves on, bringing courage and confidence for the pipfruit winter prune. Summer pruning is great to do if you’re a beginner. There will be ever less growth the spring following, as long as you don’t prune too hard! The tree has used all its carbs on leaves + fruits + new shoots and there’s not alot left in the tank. Those of you wishing to tame your stonefruit – prune immediately after harvest. Pruning them now has a few advantages – it gives you surety against silverleaf disease because there are no spores on the wing at this time of year, it spreads out the pruning jobs which I am grateful for every year, but best of all – it reduces the trees growth response. Plums, Apricots, Peaches, Nectarines, Almonds and Cherries are all best pruned in summer after they finish fruiting.
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