Fruit Tree Pruning Best Practices

Fruit trees in the yard can produce an abundant supply of food every fall. To keep your trees healthy and productive, some basic pruning must be done in late winter before the tree “leafs out.” The goal is to create an open structure that admits light and permits air circulation to reduce disease. This is done by training the branches to radiate out from the centre and removing crossing branches.

Bernie demonstrating pruning techniques during one of Dinter Nursery’s workshops.

The first step is to remove the “3 D’s”—dead, diseased, and damaged wood. Check for live wood by scratching the bark to see if it is green and moist under the bark. Cut back to a healthy bud or lateral branch. Then remove crossing branches and those growing towards the centre. Keep the height down by removing vertical branches at their origin or cutting back to a lateral shoot or to an outward facing bud. This will create a tree with branches gently radiating up and away from the centre.

Finally look at last year’s growth on the ends of the branches and head back by about 1/3 to an outward facing bud. This last bud will grow into an outward growing shoot. The buds below will produce lateral branches, creating a fuller tree. Next year some of the extra lateral branches can be removed.

Most fruit trees including apple, pear, plum, and cherry produce short stubby branches with a swollen bud. These are fruit spurs with flower buds that, when pollinated, will swell into fruit. Look out for these to anticipate how much fruit to expect. Older ones without a plump bud can be removed. Peaches are different and fruit only on last season’s wood.

It is best to give the tree a light pruning every year instead of a hard pruning after having missed a few years. Hard pruning can trigger excessive growth that becomes difficult to manage. A few minutes of attention in late winter will yield an abundant crop of healthy fruit.

Click here to download our quick guide to pruning fruit trees.