Summer Pruning Helps Keep Your Fruit Trees Dwarfed and Improves Fruit Quality

This nectarine has a canopy which is too dense and should have been summer pruned.

Next week on Saturday, April 30, 2011, I will be giving a demonstration on summer pruning fruit trees at the UNCE Orchard. Summer pruning is used to help keep standard sized fruit trees, dwarfed, by robbing them of their excessive spring growth. Most summer pruning can be done with your hands and does not usually rely on any pruning equipment. The class will start promptly at 9 am and last about one hour. No registration or fees are required. Call the Master Gardener helpline at 702-257-5555 for directions to the UNCE Orchard.

The purpose of summer pruning is several fold. 1. First it removes unwanted growth before it has a time to mature and aids in the dwarfing process of fruit trees. 2. It opens the canopy for more light penetration so that fruit quality is improved but not so much that it might cause sunburn of limbs and fruit. Young,current season growth is easily removed using your hands and pruning equipment is not usually needed.

Timing is important. It is done at a time of year when it is easily removed and after spring growth has been pushed from locations where it is not wanted. When done in April, new growth can be removed easily by pulling down. If it is done too late, this new growth will be difficult to remove by pulling.

The type of growth I focus on most often is growing straight up (suckers), growing straight down, toward the interior of the tree, growth which is crossing or interfering in some way. Remember that the spring growth of peaches and nectarines (those fruit trees that produce fruit laterally along one year old wood) will be needed next year for fruit production so be careful not to remove too much.

Fruit trees at the Orchard are kept at about 6 1/2 feet tall so new growth growing above this is also frequently removed.