Fruit trees only produce good quality fruit if they are pruned regularly. Many gardeners shy away from this work because they consider it too complicated. Admittedly, pruning fruit trees is not that easy. But you can learn how to prune a fruit tree - and if the theoretical explanations in this article are not enough for you: many tree nurseries offer pruning courses in the winter months.

Fruit trees are usually pruned in autumn or winter

When is the right time to cut the fruit tree?

Fruit trees should be pruned when there is no sap, i.e. in autumn or late winter. A later pruning between January and March has the advantage that especially heavily pruned ones do not sprout too vigorously - this has an immense influence on fruit formation. Fast-growing fruit trees put more energy into wood production, but produce fewer fruits.

plant cutting

This cut is already made when planting and aims to form an ideal tree crown. This is a strong, light crown structure consisting of a trunk, main branches and side branches. That's how it works:

  • First plant the tree.
  • Now select three strong shoots that are conveniently distributed all around the trunk.
  • It can also be four for plums, plums and sour cherries.
  • These later leading branches should not be at a point on the trunk
  • but somewhat distributed along the trunk.
  • In addition, they should emerge at as obtuse an angle as possible to the trunk.
  • Branches that grow too steeply set only a few fruits.
  • Therefore, remove all strong, steep shoots from the crown.
  • If one of the future leading branches is steeper than the other two, spread it out.
  • In addition, one or two weaker shoots remain in the young crown.
  • These should be as horizontal as possible.
  • Then shorten the three leading branches by at least one third to half
  • and always with an outward eye.
  • The central shoot, in turn, is cut back so much that it towers over the three main branches by a hand's breadth.
  • Again, cut above an outward-facing bud.

education cut

In the coming late winter or early spring you should cut back the young tree crown again. This training cut that follows is repeated until the crown is fully built up, i.e. for about five to eight years. And this is how you do it:

  • Remove all competing shoots and shoots that are too close together.
  • Shoots that have formed on the top of the branch must also be removed directly at the point of attachment.
  • Tie the remaining newly formed shoots in a horizontal position with raffia.
  • Now cut back the extensions of trunk and leading branches.
  • However, do not cut them back as much as when you planted them.
  • If the tree has only grown weakly, this step is omitted.

After about three to four years after planting, you should also start training the side branches. About three side branches should be used per main branch, which grow slightly obliquely upwards and are subordinate to the main branches in terms of their length. So-called fruit branches, on the other hand, are not pruned unless a tree has too many of them. After pruning, the tree should have the shape of a house roof or a flat pyramid.

maintenance cut

The crown is fully developed about three to five years after planting; from that point on, all you have to do is keep them in order with the maintenance pruning. The aim of this intervention is the stimulation of ever new fruit wood. In addition, the crown must remain as light as possible so that diseases do not develop in the first place and you can harvest healthy and high-quality fruit. The best way to carry out maintenance cuts is as follows:

  • Remove all diseased and dead branches and shoots.
  • Now cut off all fruit branches that are more than three years old.
  • Place the old fruit branches on existing young shoots.
  • These should preferably grow diagonally outwards.
  • Cut out young shoots that have developed along the thicker branches and are too close together.
  • The other young shoots remain uncut, they also develop into fruit wood.

Thin out older trees

Many older fruit trees have not been pruned for years, with the result that their crowns are far too dense and the fruit wood is missing inside the crown. In such a case, with a rejuvenation cut, all branches that are too close together at the attachment points are first removed; give preference to cancerous or weak branches or those that lie close to others. Older, badly neglected crowns should not be pruned all at once, because otherwise the remaining branches would produce new shoots that could hardly be controlled (so-called “water shoots”). It is better to cut such specimens in two to three weeks in a row, whereby of course the particularly annoying parts are removed first.

tips

It is advisable to supplement the training pruning in the first few years (except in the year of planting) with an extra summer treatment in July or August. All shoots that are not required for the crown structure and that you would have to remove in winter anyway are cut away. With a summer cut, the crown build-up progresses more quickly.

Category:

Trees