Pillar fruit is not only suitable as a high-yield privacy screen in the garden, but also for growing fruit in pots on the balcony or terrace. In order to have lasting success in the culture of columnar peaches, you should cut them regularly.
A columnar peach should be pruned regularly
The right time for the cut
As a rule, it is advisable to cut the columnar peach either shortly before flowering or directly after harvesting. Ideally, the two times are combined so that the main shaping, regeneration and maintenance pruning is done after harvest. About two-thirds of the branches that have borne fruit in the current season are severely shortened. The cuts on the branches heal particularly easily and quickly at this time of the year. In the spring, you should pay particular attention to the fresh buds: Based on the buds, you should decide which corrective pruning measures to take in the spring.
Distinguish true and false fruit shoots
In addition to the main trunk, the following types of branches or twigs can usually be distinguished on a peach tree:
- true fruit shoots
- false fruit shoots
- wood shoots
One speaks of wood shoots when there are no flowers and consequently no fruits to be discovered. If wooden shoots are not needed to build the tree, they can easily be shortened to about two pairs of eyes. It is a case of false fruit shoots if there are no pointed leaf buds to be discovered in spring in addition to the rounded flower buds. The true fruit shoots should remain on the tree as undamaged as possible: In these, a pointed leaf bud is surrounded by two rounded flower buds. However, the ends of these shoots can also be shortened somewhat in order to obtain the compact form of a columnar peach.
column with volume
Even if some glossy catalogs like to promise it, no columnar peach can set a large number of fruits on its trunk without lateral branches. Therefore, the columnar peach should be pruned regularly to promote branching. At the same time, these lateral shoots are shortened to create a decorative columnar shape.
tips
To keep a columnar peach from senescence and to ensure a steady supply of annual fruiting wood, well-developed, true fruit shoots are pruned back to about eight bud triplets (the combination of two flower buds and a leaf bud. Rather underdeveloped, weak fruit shoots can be three to four bud triplets are cut back.