Cherries from your own cherry tree taste wonderful and can add a fruity taste to numerous recipes. But when should you cut the cherry tree so that it grows healthily and rewards the gardener with a rich harvest every year? As with all other fruit trees, pruning cherries is particularly important. Below we will reveal which is the best time to do this and how to do it correctly.
Cherry trees are onebeautiful addition to any garden, but you need to know how to prune a cherry tree to keep it healthy and in good shape. With their colorful foliage in fall, pretty blooms in spring, and delicious fruit in summer, cherries are both ornamental and useful plants in the garden. A distinction can be made between sweet cherries, which produce delicious, sweet fruits, and sour cherries, whose fruits are more suitable for cooking, baking or preserving. There are also compact columnar cherry trees and dwarf cherries that are also suitable for containers. And the cutting method will of course depend on the particular variety.
Why should you prune cherry trees?
The main reason why you should prune a cherry tree is to provide the tree's crown with light. If the crown is not thinned out by pruning at the right time, it will become bald, which can lead to a lack of fruit production.
The goal of cherry tree pruning is to open the center of the tree to allow sunlight and air to penetrate through the branches. The more sunlight the tree's inner branches receive, the more it blooms and the more fruit is formed.
Aannual pruningIn old cherry trees, it helps maintain a healthy balance between older fruit wood and younger branches. It also ensures that the trees remain more compact, making the fruit easier to pick.
Maintaining a clear flow of air through the cherry tree also helps protect the tree from disease. To reduce the risk of infection, disinfect all tools before pruning.
Cutting cherry trees: the most important things at a glance
Pruning old, established cherry trees should be done once a year to maintain their shape and promote healthy growth. The best time to do this is immediately after harvest to slow down growth. An exact period cannot be determined as it depends on the climate and variety, but as a rule the months of July and August are suitable. Pruning cherry trees also results in a better harvest because removing some branches exposes the remaining shoots to more sunlight. In general, when pruning you should try to cut as little as possible and only remove a few complete branches in order to give the tree crown an open structure.
When should you prune the cherry tree?
Sweet cherries and sour cherries can benefit the most from pruning in summer. This promotes slow growth, increases the tree's fertility and prevents disease. The optimal time is directly after the harvest. In summer, the cuts also close more quickly, which keeps fungal pathogens and pests away.
There is another advantage for early and mid-early varieties - timely pruning allows for a second annual shoot. In principle: small branches and twigs that can be removed with secateurs are cut after the harvest or in late winter. Thick branches are only cut with pruning shears or pruning saws in summer.
You need these tools:
- a pair of pruning shears for pruning medium-sized branches
- Tree saw for thicker branches
- Hand shears or pruning shears for cutting very small branches
Cutting cherry trees in summer – instructions
How to prune cherry trees depends on their variety and age. Below you will find a few tips for summer pruning of sweet cherries, sour cherries and columnar cherry trees.
How to cut a sweet cherry
In general, sweet cherry trees only require light pruning once they are established. How to do it correctly:
- Shorten any strong, vertically growing shoots crowding the center to allow air to flow freely.
- Remove any crossing, weak, dead, damaged or diseased branches.
- Shorten the tip of the remaining branches by about a third of the new growth to encourage fruit bud development.
- Also remove any offshoots back to the base of the tree. These will never produce good fruit.
Prune sour cherries correctly
However, if you have an established tart cherry, it will need to be pruned back much more than a sweet cherry, as the fruit comes primarily from the previous year's growth.
- As with a sweet cherry, remove all dead, damaged and diseased branches.
- Also remove about a quarter of the remaining older wood and cut it back to a main branch or a younger side shoot.
- Shorten any young shoots longer than 30cm to encourage branching.
Cut the columnar cherry tree in two stages
Columnar cherries save space and feel at home in small gardens as well as on balconies and terraces. Pruning is not always necessary with this variety. If necessary, long side branches are cut back to 10 to 15 cm long branches. Side shoots that grow vertically compete with the trunk and should be removed to avoid using up valuable nutrients.
Pruning the upper half of the columnar cherries is best done in the summer, directly after the harvest, i.e. between June and July. The weak branches on the lower half of the tree are ideally cut in late winter.
A notice:The cherry tree should not be cut in damp weather or rain to avoid disease.
Prune a young cherry tree correctly
To control the shape of young cherry trees, winter pruning is necessary. In the first year, cut back the central trunk to encourage the growth of side shoots. In the second year, select around four well-spaced, wider side shoots at a distance of at least 50 cm from the ground and shorten them by two thirds. These will then be the main branches.
Remove any side shoots underneath and cut the main trunk to just above the top side line.
In the third year, when these main shoots have formed their own side shoots, cut back the strongest of these side shoots by half.
From this point on, you can control the size of the tree with annual pruning.
