Fruit Tree Pruning Tips

Whether grown primarily for their cropping potential or for their combined productive and decorative value, fruit trees need careful pruning and training to maintain high-quality yields.

There are three primary aims when pruning and training fruit trees:

• to influence the direction of shoot growth, ensuring structural strength and the desired tree form;
• to remove promptly dead, diseased, or damaged wood and prevent crowded or crossing branches, protecting the tree’s health;
• to maintain a good balance between cropping and growth. 

Choice of tree form (bush, standard, cordon, espalier, and fan) dictates a pruning program that can range from simple to intricate.  When pruning mature trees, there is a clear distinction between the treatment of free-growing tree forms (bushes and standards) and those where shoot growth has to be restricted (cordon, espalier and fans).  With free-growing forms, pruning is used simply to maintain the balance between the number of fruit buds that develop and the amount of growth (future crop potential).  With restricted forms, pruning must also maintain size, shape and branch structure.

The techniques used will also need to be varied at different times of the year and at different stages in the tree’s life.  Understand and respond to the growth and fruiting habit not only of the fruit tree in general (growth bud vs. flower bud) but also how the chosen fruit and cultivar is affected by your soil, site and climate.

Routine pruning usually takes place in late winter or early spring and is applied to all fruit trees.  To maintain the size and balanced shape of a mature tree, the general rule is to prune weak growth hard and stronger growth lightly.  Hard pruning overall will result in strong new growth but few fruits; general under-pruning may be followed by an abundance of small fruits.  The exact mix and severity of pruning is entirely dependent upon the state of the tree – whether it is lacking in vigorous new growth or is growing vigorously but fruiting lightly, and on where new growth is needed to replace older wood nearing the end of its useful life.