Fruit tree and Bush Pruning Guide

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[acc_item title=”Blackcurrants”]
Fruiting characteristics: Fruits on last years new wood
Pruning time: Immediately after harvest
What to do: Cut to base all branches that bore this year’s fruit
Comments:
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[acc_item title=”Other bush fruit: red & white currents, gooseberries, blueberries, Worcester berries”]
Fruiting characteristics: Fruits on older wood
Pruning time: After harvest or during winter
What to do: Cut out new growth; prune to maintain desired shape; thin out very old branches to base
Comments: Gooseberries and Worcester berries are best trained into a hedge; use supports for young bushes. They can also be trained as cordons
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[acc_item title=”Cane fruit: Raspberries, Tay berries, Logan berries and Blackberries except autumn fruiting raspberries”]
Fruiting characteristics: Fruit on last year’s new canes, these die after fruiting
Pruning time: After harvest is best but can be delayed until winter
What to do: Cut down dead fruited canes and remove the weakest of the new canes
Comments: Raspberries are best trained as a row or as a pyramid The other cane fruit should be trained with the new canes on one side and the old on the other if room permits
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[acc_item title=”Autumn fruiting raspberries”]
Fruiting characteristics:Fruits on this year’s new canes
Pruning time: Over the winter
What to do: Cut everything to 6inches
Comments: This far North it is marginal whether these are worthwhile as autumn frosts can stop the fruit from ripening
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[acc_item title=”Stone fruit: plums, peaches, apricots and cherries”]
Fruiting characteristics: Fruits on older wood
Pruning time: To avoid the risk of Silver Leaf disease prune only between April and mid August
What to do: Routinelycut back new growth to maintain the required size of tree. Cut out diseased branches Every few years renovate by cutting out oldest branches and those that cross each other
Comments: As most varieties do notripen until after mid august at our latitude; pruning is done when the fruit is on the tree. Renovation pruning may entail loosing fruit
unless delayed until a ‘no fruit’ year.
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[acc_item title=”Apples, Pears, Quinces and Medlars”]
Fruiting characteristics: Fruiting spurs form on older wood and can be encouraged by summer pruning
Pruning time: Summer pruning: June – September; several times for young trees. Winter pruning: November – March
What to do: Summer: To encourage the formation of fruiting spurs on non leader branches cut new growth back to leave 2 new leaves. Trim off top 4-6 inches of leaders to encourage branching. New branches can then be pruned to produce fruiting spurs.
Routinely cut all young branches to a fruiting bud; unnecessary on mature trees.
Periodically renovate older trees by cutting out old, diseased, crossing and overcrowded branches.
Comments: Mature trees need little or no summer pruning. Summer pruning of young trees goes along with training the tree into the desired form, ie cordon; espalier, step-over etc
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