The size of fruit trees isn’t something you conjure up with a snap of the fingers, and it isn’t reinvented to suit your whims either… It’s the fruit trees that decide just as much as the cycles of the seasons.
Pruning: Fruit trees, it’s the season!
There is indeed a wide variety of fruits and therefore many different fruit trees, but there is also a multitude of varieties (for apples alone, there are almost 10,000!).
Fruit trees are rooted in their regions, have contributed and still contribute to an incredible craftsmanship in processing, storage, and cultivation.
Today, fruit trees are riding a wave of popularity, which is a very good thing for showcasing notions of local production and for reminding us that there are seasons for fruit!
Why prune your fruit trees
Pruning fruit trees helps them gain more vigor than they would otherwise have. It enables them to better withstand diseases or harsh weather, and at the same time to produce more with the same resources.
Pruning may also be necessary when a tree is diseased or if it has suffered damage, such as a lightning strike. The task is often delicate and can represent the tree’s last chance, but without it it might not have any chance at all.
When to prune your fruit trees
In general, pruning fruit trees is done at the very end of autumn and through the winter. The traditional window is November to February, sometimes into early March, keeping clear of frost. This is the right time for apricot pruning, for peach pruning, or for raspberry pruning.
In winter, you prune plum trees, hazelnut trees about once every five years, pear trees, the apple tree, and the cherry tree.
For stone fruits, you’ll thank yourself for tending to them at the end of winter, whereas pome fruits will tend to call for work in late autumn.
All fruit trees have their own little quirks that deserve attention on a case-by-case basis to ensure you act at the right moment. Indeed, depending on age or the problems your tree faces, you may need to plan an extra pruning later in the year.
In summer, after each bloom, you’ll take care of pruning a Mexican orange tree. As for tomato pruning, you’ll do it as you go. You prune non-bearing raspberries in July.
What size should fruit trees be?
Pruning fruit trees is ageless; it starts the day you plant and continues for the life of the tree.
The planting prune
On the day you plant, you’ll need to prune the roots by trimming the longest ones to form a compact ball while removing any broken or damaged roots. This will greatly boost root take and the development of what we call the root system that guarantees your fruit tree’s ability to feed itself quickly and efficiently.
The training prune
This pruning happens in the year following planting and helps shape the tree, strengthen the trunk, and ensure that the sap flows evenly and effectively to all the branches of the tree.
The fruiting prune
An unpruned fruit tree will develop an enormous amount of wood, darken inside, and become so crowded that it will not bear as many fruits as it could, and more importantly, the fruits will be smaller and of lower quality (durability, flavor, etc.).
Without pruning of the excessive or inward-growing branches, your fruit tree is doomed to shrink and eventually die.
Restoration pruning
Did you take a world tour on a donkey? A harsh winter battered your fruit tree? A storm snapped several main branches? This is when you embark on restoration pruning—i.e., a hard, ambitious prune of a large portion of the tree with non-negligible risks that it may not survive the operation.
But what would we not do to ensure its longest possible lifespan!
by Denis Retournard, Jean-Yves Prat
Accessible to everyone thanks to its simple language and alphabetical arrangement, The ABC of Pruning guides you, step by step, to prune the trees and shrubs in your garden: your daily companion in the garden.
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