The Art of Pruning

Pruning fruit trees is an art and it is so satisfying. Pruning is one of things that everyone in our family truly loves to do. Sound silly? It might be, but pruning is about shaping a tree for the future bounty to come. It’s a way to shape a tree for not only the next season’s fruit bearing year, but the year after that too.

Here is a Santa Rosa plum tree that is more than 25+ years old. We are working on bringing down two of the bigger limbs so they are lower and prompt growth on the lower half of the tree. And, opening the interior of the tree to have lots of room for light and air - this includes taking out the suckers that spike up tall and fast.

Since we had such a hard frost on plums for the 2023 growing season, we also want to keep as much 2-year old wood as possible to keep as many fruit buds on the limbs. Plums are a true gem of the fruit season and they have a long shelf life. We want to have more of them for 2024.

If you have fruit trees in yard, get outside by March and give them a good pruning. You’ll find it’s truly an enjoyable art.