orion619
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Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:39 pm
Location: Zebulon, NC

Fruit Tree Pruning Question

Hi......I planted 13 bare root fruit trees 5 days ago. (6 peach, 3 apple, 3 plum and 1 cherry) I planned on pruning this weekend and noticed 10 of the 13 are budding. The weather has been warm this week. I know it is best to prune when in the dormant stage. Is it too late or will I now do harm to the trees? I was really shocked to see green on these trees since I planted 6 trees last fall and they haven't broken bud yet. These have been in the ground for 5 days now........ thanks

JONA878
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1014
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2009 2:14 am
Location: SUSSEX

orion619 wrote:Hi......I planted 13 bare root fruit trees 5 days ago. (6 peach, 3 apple, 3 plum and 1 cherry) I planned on pruning this weekend and noticed 10 of the 13 are budding. The weather has been warm this week. I know it is best to prune when in the dormant stage. Is it too late or will I now do harm to the trees? I was really shocked to see green on these trees since I planted 6 trees last fall and they haven't broken bud yet. These have been in the ground for 5 days now........ thanks
Hi Orion.
I guess that as your trees are bare root they are maidens or at best only two year olds.
In which case you shouldn't have very much pruning to do in the first year anyway.
It doesn't hurt to prune at bud-break. In fact if I could prune all our trees in a week or so I would leave them all until that period as you can see for certain then what is going to be good fruit bud and what is not.

One thing I would do though is get the branches tied down to the positions that you want them to finish up at. Young trees respond to manipulation so much easier than older ones. This is especially useful on the cherries and plums as they are inclined to go skywards if they get a chance.
Good luck.



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