Florence Grovida Gardening

Pruning fruit trees

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Producing bushels of high-quality fruit and developing a sturdy tree that can support the crop are the twin goals of pruning and training fruit trees. If you end up with an attractive landscape specimen too, that's a bonus! Although you use the same basic pruning techniques on all fruit trees, each kind of fruit tree has unique timing and methods for reaching your goals. For an introduction to basic pruning techniques and tools, flip to Chapter 19.

You need to prune fruit trees regularly for several reasons:

• To remove dead, damaged, and diseased wood: Do this before any other pruning and whenever necessary.
• To control tree and shrub size: Keep fruit down where you can harvest and care for it without a ladder.
• To provide air circulation: Circulation helps ward off pests and diseases. Crowded limbs invite fungus diseases and provide habitat for damaging insects.
• To increase exposure to sunlight: Fruit that's exposed to direct sunlight tastes better than fruit shaded by leaves and branches.
• To increase the quality and quantity of fruit: Branches trained to 60-degree angles where they meet the trunk develop the most flower buds. Spacing the limbs up and down and around the trunk provides the best conditions for the fruit to mature.

Professional fruit growers use several pruning and training methods, depending on the type of fruit they grow (see Figure 16-2):

• Central leader: Used mainly with apple, European pear and plum trees, large nut trees, and dwarf cultivars, this method yields trees with single, upright trunks, called central leaders. The main limbs should be spaced about 8 inches apart and extend in all directions around the trunk so that no limb is directly above another. To maximize sunlight penetration, prune the limbs so that those at the top of the tree are shorter than branches under them.
• Modified central leader: In this system, trees are trained to a single, upright central leader, with limbs evenly spaced until they reach a desired height — usually, 6 to 10 feet. At that point, you prune out the leader and maintain the tree at that height. All fruit trees can be trained to this form.
• Open center (also called vase shape): Peaches, nectarines, sour cherries, apricots, Asian pears, and Japanese plums produce easy-to-reach, high-quality fruit when the trees are pruned to this form. In this style, you select four or five well-placed main branches and then prune out the central leader. This method limits the height of the tree and creates a spreading crown.

Note: These styles apply mainly to temperate-climate fruit; tropical fruits, such as citrus, are trained differently.

Figure 16-2:

From left to right: Central leader, modified central leader, and open center.

Figure 16-2:

From left to right: Central leader, modified central leader, and open center.

Choose young fruit trees with good structure to start with and shape them as they grow. Here's how to get your trees off to a good start:

• At planting time: Remove damaged and dead limbs, those less than 25 inches from the ground, and any with narrow crotch angles of less than 45 degrees. Leave branches with crotch angles between 45 and 80 degrees. If the tree has two shoots competing to be the leader, choose one and remove the other.
• First winter: In late winter, select three to four limbs to keep as main branches. They should be about 8 inches apart vertically, be well spaced around the trunk, and have approximately 60-degree angles at the trunk. Prune off all other limbs. Prune the remaining limbs back by one third of their length to encourage side branching. Prune the central leader to 24 to 30 inches above the uppermost limb for a central-leader-style tree. If you're pruning for an open center or vase shape, remove the central leader just above the top branch.
• Second summer: In midsummer, remove water sprouts, which grow upright from the branches, and suckers, which grow up from the base of the tree. In central-leader trees, choose the strongest, most upright leader; then remove the competing ones. Using the criteria mentioned for the first dormant season, choose the next tier of limbs, beginning about 15 to 18 inches above the top branch of the lower tier, and remove undesirable limbs. In open-center trees, remove competing, crowded, and upright shoots.
• Second winter: Remove undesirable limbs, competing leaders, water sprouts, and suckers, and prune the new growth of side branches back by one third. Use notched sticks called spreaders to spread the remaining limbs to 60-degree angles where they meet the trunk. Leave the spreaders in place until mid- to late summer. In open-center trees, prune new shoots by one third to outward-facing buds — buds that face away from the trunk — to encourage branching. Thin out crowded shoots by removing the weakest ones. See the "Where to find fruits and nuts" sidebar for sources of spreaders; many nurseries offer them.
• Continuing care: Continue to follow the directions for the second season year after year. To develop a modified central-leader tree, remove the central leader just above the uppermost branch you want to keep. Do this job in the summer to inhibit vigorous sprouting.