It’s time to prune most fruit trees

Tyler—Winter is the prime season for planting and pruning fruit trees, and a little thoughtful work now pays off in healthier trees and better fruit later. When pruning mature trees, the goals are simple: reduce the number of fruit so the remaining crop grows larger, stimulate new fruiting wood, remove damaged or poorly situated branches, and keep the tree at a manageable height for harvesting.

Most fruit trees, when left unpruned, set far more fruit than they can size and mature properly. The result is a heavy load of small, poorly colored fruit. To prevent this, remove select limbs each winter while the trees are dormant. Peaches, in particular, require severe annual pruning to maintain production. Other fruit species fall somewhere in between, but all benefit from regular attention.

Trees that go several years without pruning become weak and stop producing quality fruiting wood. Because most fruit trees rely on new wood each year to bear good-sized fruit, annual pruning is essential. Young wood grows vigorously, sometimes as much as 40 inches in a season, while old wood may extend only a couple of inches. Young shoots are thick, upright, smooth, and brightly colored. Older wood is thin, drooping, gray, crooked, and heavily branched. Not surprisingly, young wood produces the best fruit. Peaches and plums bear only on last year’s growth, which is why they demand such consistent pruning to ensure next year’s crop.

Many older trees slip into an alternate bearing cycle, heavily producing one year and lightly the next. When possible, prune more aggressively just before the heavy bearing year. If you can identify fruit buds, you can also thin the crop during the pruning process, reducing the strain on the tree and improving fruit size.

Wind, heavy crops, and disease often break branches, and overcrowding or shade can kill them outright. Pruning removes dead, damaged, diseased, weak, or crossing limbs and opens the canopy to sunlight. Thin out weak, spindly shoots and any growth pulled down by previous crops (“hangers”) or shaded out by stronger branches. Remove water sprouts each year as they grow vigorously but rarely produce fruit.

As older wood begins to weaken, remove it rather than allowing it to produce smaller and smaller fruit. Strong new shoots will replace it and bear fruit similar to that of a young tree. The goal is always the same: maintain young, vigorous wood on an older framework.

Unpruned trees eventually grow too tall to harvest, and most of their fruit is high in the canopy. Once a tree reaches 10 to 15 feet, prune annually to keep it within that range. A combination of thinning cuts and selective topping of upper limbs works well for maintaining a manageable height.

This type of heavy annual pruning applies to edible fruiting trees only, not ornamental trees such as Japanese apricots, Mexican plums, or flowering peaches.

For a comprehensive, research-based guide to growing and pruning peaches, see the Peaches publication under Fruit and Nut Resources on our Aggie Horticulture website (aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu).

Greg Grant, Ph.D., is the Smith County horticulturist and Master Gardener coordinator for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service in Tyler.