To Prune or not to Prune ~ When, is the Question!

So many different schedules for pruning your fruit trees! You might well ask why. The question is fairly simple to answer, it depends on the types of fruit trees you have and your local growing season. Personally I like to prune in the spring and summer when the trees will be growing and will heal faster rather than the fall when they are getting ready to go dormant.

It's best not to over prune, you don't want to cut more than 1/3rd of the live growth:
     1. Cut out any dead branches and branches that are rubbing against others.
     2. Thin out the extra new shoots from the year before.
     3. Trim the tall branches down, depending on the height you need/want the tree to be.

Spring pruning will tell the trees to put on new growth and will spur them to heal over the wounds from pruning. Summer pruning will be less likely to spur water shoots (suckers.)

If you have some branches that you really need/want to keep but they are just too close to other branches you can use a piece of lath wood (notched at both ends) as a "spreader" to push them apart.

1. Apple, Cherry & Plum/Prune: Produces fruit on the fruit spurs from old wood.

2. Apricot, Nectarines & Peaches: Produces fruit on the new growth from the year before.