Pruning Stone Fruit Trees: Peaches, Plums, Apricots

Stone fruits are those with a pit.  Peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries, and apricots.  A tree ripened peach is a heavenly, juicy, sweet treat.    Both peaches and apricots have so many uses other than fresh eating.  They make wonderful jams, jellies, salsas, fruit leather, syrups, sauces, compotes, and smoothies.  If you care for your trees they will reward you with abundant harvests.

Most stone fruit trees are pruned to an open center.  They do best with this open centered structure because it allows light into the center of the tree to ripen the fruit.  It also is a strong structure for the heavy bearing that is common to stone fruits.  Its is also based on the natural structure of these fruit trees.

I have to say up front that pruning can be intimidating to many gardeners.  It is so important to prune in order to size up the fruit, prevent branches from breaking, and ensure that fruiting wood is restored each year.  So it is better to prune a little than not at all.

A simple approach is to do the following:

Pruning Peaches & Nectarines

• The goal is to keep the center of the tree open so sunlight can reach the fruit.
• Completely remove dead, damaged, and diseased limbs
• Remove limbs that are growing toward the center of the tree
• Prune one-third of the new growth from growing season. Leave fruiting wood that is the thickness of a pencil and 12" to 24" long.
• Remove vigorous growing water sprouts which are vertical growing branches.  Some can be left  to replace damaged or diseased fruiting wood.
• Remove any suckers growing up from the roots
• Peaches and nectarines will require some heading back which means you are controlling the height of the tree by pruning back to a lateral growing bud.  

Where does the fruit grow?

On peaches the fruit grows on 2 year old and older wood.   That means it grows on last years growth.  The goal is to remove or shorten previous years growth by about 1/3 to encourage new growth that will become next years fruiting wood.  

When to Prune?

Pruning affects the balance between root and branches.  Pruning trees when dormant will increase the vigor of the tree which means lots of new growth.  Summer pruning will result in less growth.  There can be a need for both depending on your goal.

Cherry Trees

Cherries need very little pruning.  They are large trees and should be pruned to a modified leader meaning they have on central branch.  Mature tart cherries also need little pruning.  While cherry trees are maturing work on creating strong crotch angels using branch spreaders and developing a good scaffold branches.

Pruning Cherries:

• Remove diseased or damaged branches
• Remove branches that cross or rub 

Apricot Trees

• Apricot trees can be trained to an open center or modified leader.
• They produce long slender branches that need to be headed back or shortened to encourage branching.
• Apricots are produced on short lived spurs
• Apricots bloom early and flowers or young fruit can be lost to frosts.  
• Delay pruning until after the tree blooms
• Prune lightly if there was a small crop the previous year.

Plum Trees

• Japanese cultivars like Santa Rosa are pruned to an open center
• Prune lightly until mature bearing occurs and then thin to encourage fruiting.

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