Another 'How Much to Prune This New Tree' question

General Fruit Growing
1

This Euro plum is a poser for me. I’ve managed to prune, even severely prune, a few new units upon planting, but this is quite tall and mature, and I kinda partially broke a branch which may not make any difference (it’s wrapped in parafilm). By the time the tree is this old I wonder if it would start new branches. Also, the branches start at about 3 ft which is not great, but OK. It’s still very dormant, and most of the other bare roots units at the store had leafed out quite a bit, except for the the other Euro plums…so I took a chance.
So, I invite suggestions for pruning, with the orange tape knot as the reference point. Thanks in advance.
…Seedy Steve

Yeller Eg 6436 b

2

Seedy, what kind of tree is it? If it’s an apple or a pear I’d be tempted to train it as a central leader by cutting the lower two branches way back.

3

I forgot to mention that it’s a Euro plum tree…yah, good information to include. I’ll go back and fix the starter post. In my brief forum search it seems that plums, in general, are pruned to ‘open vase’ and I suppose that’s why it came in this shape. With that in mind, I’m thinking either leave it, cut all three branches back to the knot or ??, or lop off the top. I’ve cut off a few young trees but I’m spooked about this one…maybe too far along.

4

Not too far along, I think, but I’m not a good person to ask about stone fruit.

Somebody else will come in out of the sun and let you know soon!

1 Like
5

Hmmm…many lookers, no more comments. I’ll at least cut the branches back to the knot area and wait a little while longer for folks to chime in.

6

I’d head those 3 scaffolds back to 1/2 or more to an outward facing bud to equalize the leaf to root ratio (bare root=not enough roots to support leafs IMO)

7

Thanks, I took the leap this afternoon; probably about the time you wrote this. I decided the branches are at an OK height. They’re now cut to about the knot area. I hope the kinda broken one heals up, but either way it’s like you say, Carlin, the root/top balance is the deciding factor here.
I also just planted a large, bare root nut tree that had an huge amount of its tap root chopped, and that’s about all it had. It has been grafted pretty high (I guess) and cut back, but is still nearly five feet tall. One can only hope.
Thanks for the encouragement, Mark and Carlin.

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Now I am no expert but I try to have 6-8" between arms of my open vase trees. When they are mature and 6-8" in diameter, those arms you have will be growing into each other and I understand this is a common point of failure of older trees (eg the arms splits/shears from the main trunk).

Myself, I would cut off the broken branch flush. I would head the trunk just below the upper branch making your middle branch the new leader. I would then notch above 3-4 buds. 1 say 6-8" below this new leader, 1 say 2 buds up the new leader from the trunk, then 1 bud 8 inches above that one. The lowest bud I would pick a south/south-west facing bud. Then alternate directions for the others.

For more info you can read and watch the videos at:

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I will look into this tonight. I expect to keep this tree no taller than ~8ft/2.5m which is the norm (planned) in my mini-orchard. I like your branch location ideas. I’ll see how this fits into the info from Skillcut. Thanks!