When is the best time to prune cherry trees?

Cherry tree pruning time

Cherry trees need to be pruned three times: summer, autumn and winter.

1. Summer pruning: During the leaf clustering period, all competing buds that affect the strong branches on the main trunk and near the large cut can be removed. In addition, it is also necessary to remove the stumps, diseased and insect-infested branches, waste buds, and reduce the long fruit branches that have not set fruit, and thin out the dense branches on the main side branches and fruiting branch groups.

2. Autumn pruning: After September, the new shoots of cherry trees no longer extend and are in a state of stopped growth. The tender shoots of the current year's branches can be cut off to reduce nutrient consumption, promote the formation of flower buds, retract the overgrown branches by 1/3, and appropriately thin out the dense branches and leaves that block light on the outside.

3. Winter pruning: Cherry trees can be pruned in mid-to-late December, cutting back less than 1/5 of the total length of annual branches, and removing useless branches that are weak, diseased, insect-infested, old, leggy, overlapping, and crowded and light-blocking. Fruiting branches or fruit-bearing branches that grow too vigorously can be left alone for a long time.

How to prune a cherry tree

1. Pruning of large branches. Cherry trees need to be combed as early as possible to make them sparse on the top and dense on the bottom, sparse on the outside and dense on the inside. The large branches should be sparse and the small branches should be dense. As the age of the tree increases, the fruit tree will become closed. It is necessary to kill some large branches to guide light into the trunk so that every branch can see light and balance the branches. This is the pruning of branches.

2. Head dropping: In the early stage, the fruit yield is small, the vegetative growth is large, and the trees grow vigorously, which is not conducive to operation and fruit picking. Therefore, the heads should be dropped in time.

First, you need to thin out the strong branches on top to weaken the part above the wound, allowing it to bloom and bear fruit in time, and leave the moderate and weak branches on top, and thin out the overly strong and vigorous branches. After the small branches have bloomed and bore fruit in large numbers, they will begin to drop their heads, and they must fall in places with flower buds to stay there.

3. When pruning and renewing fruiting branches, it is necessary to remove the weak ones and keep the strong ones. For overcrowded branches, the spacing should be thinned out, and thin branches, diseased and insect-infested branches, and branches with gum should be promptly thinned out. For some fruiting branches that have been thin and weak for many years, they should be shrunk or thinned out to reduce nutrient loss.

Cherry tree pruning precautions

You must pay attention to the branch group culture of the cherry tree. It is generally recommended to be a stick, but you can also choose to cultivate a small crown head shape. The pruning method is short-cutting. Use scissors and toothpicks to open it when it grows to about 30 centimeters, and then short-cut the branches from the middle part. Short-cutting can also be done in spring, mainly to increase the strength of the lower part and weaken the strength of the middle trunk.