Like almost all citrus plants, the orange tree is an evergreen plant. Therefore, every tree pruning is associated with a loss of leaves. However, this loss is compensated for so quickly by the next budding that you don't need to shy away from reaching for the scissors. You also don't have to worry if individual fruits fall victim to the pruning measures. This will only make the remaining ones bigger.

Raise an orange tree to a high trunk?

If you have received a small, bushy young plant and want to grow a standard, semi-standard or standard plant from it, please bear in mind that, after a few years, standard plants in particular can become too large for conventional conservatories. Oranges are very vigorous, so that a height of three to four meters is not uncommon for a standard tree. When trained as a bush, such a tree would only be 40 centimeters high plus 10 centimeters trunk plus two meters crown, so a total of about 2.5 meters.

Cut an orange tree into shape

The topiary is best done at the end of the growing season. To do this, proceed as follows:

  • remove any branches that don't fit the shape you want
  • Remove inward growing branches
  • Isolation of too densely growing shoots
  • Shorten new shoots with a length of more than 40 centimeters by half
  • the same with older shoots that protrude far from the crown
  • cut out all dead wood
  • remove stunted shoots at the lower end of the trunk
  • for a more compact crown design, prune the outermost young shoots uniformly
    at half length

A topiary is always cut to a string, that is, the branch to be removed is cut up to the trunk from which it springs, or up to a strong branch (side branch). Under no circumstances should stumps be left standing. These would only dry up or, if the humidity is high, offer the Botrytis fungus a target.

Perform a taper cut

A rejuvenation cut should take place in the spring if possible. In contrast to topiary, almost the entire foliage is removed here, since the foliage of trees that are to be rejuvenated is often only to be found on the periphery, making the plants look quite sparse. And this is how you perform a taper cut:

  • The entire crown must be severely cut back.
  • Cut back to stumps 2 to 6 inches long.
  • Do not pay attention to buds, fruits or leaves.
  • After a strong rejuvenation cut, there should hardly be a leaf left on the tree.
  • However, new growth takes place within two to three weeks.

You should then cut back all young shoots that have sprouted after the rejuvenation cut to a length of 30 to a maximum of 40 centimeters as quickly as possible. In this way, better branching is stimulated.

tips and tricks

If the shape cut is carried out regularly in autumn, you save yourself the rejuvenation cut completely. Regulating cuts in summer with shoots growing too vigorously from the crown sometimes even save a topiary in autumn.

Category:

Vegetable garden