I wouldn’t normally be asking this as heading cuts for whips are normal upon planting and I’ve become comfortable with pruning, but, I planted a Rainier cherry in mid March, headed it to 30", and it started leafing out and then stalled and died back to the rootstock. We had a rough, cold, late spring in western Montana and I planted that one early, so I think that’s why it failed.
So I’m a little gun-shy and looking for encouragement.
I just got a replacement, pictured above, another Rainier whip at about 6.5 ft tall and 3/4" caliper. Upon planting I was pleased to find a decent root system, it was potted at the nursery from bare root but has a lot of new white root growth along the perimeter of the pot. It’s fully leafed out. It doesn’t have a ton of leaves down low but enough that I’m thinking of pruning it 36-40" from the ground, which would match the adjacent Lapins and Bing cherries well enough.
Any thoughts on timing or height of this heading cut?
I would not head the whip this season. Maybe if it where in the ground for a year but its newly planted and put all its energy into those leaves up top.
I would notch above all the buds I want to encourage to grow. Thats basicly putting a big deep slice though the bark above the buds. Then head when the tree is dormant in winter.
I guess I should add I’m generally going for the backyard orchard culture style of an open vase tree to a final height of 8-10’. The other two adjacent cherries are nice open vase style with the scaffolds at 32-36", so aesthetically I would like to match those, though of course if that’s truly unrealistic given this tall whip then I’ll go for modified central leader etc
Thanks
I thought about the apricot that I planted last year then drastically headed off this year and it responded very well, so that sounds good. I made some notches this morning to try to stimulate some early scaffolds down low, we’ll see if that is successful.
Maybe it was only me, but 2 years ago I did a fair number of notchings, but the vast majority were uncecsesful. These were done in the spring about this time of year (May), but they did not result in new growth.
Last year I did my notching in Feb and a high proportion of those were successful. My early trees such as J plums start coming out of dormancy in Feb, and from my limited experience just before trees are waking up gives you a far higher chance at success.
I am zone 9b, so my seasons are likely ahead of yours if you’re in a very cold area. May seems a bit late for a high success rate, but I guess if your snow just melted a week or two ago then you’re timing is just fine.
I myself do everything the first year. I just got a small whip of Spice Zee Nectaplum. I love getting them this small. I headed right after planting. Now I’ll leave it alone for awhile.
I have always done this and it works for me. Peach trees quickly loose lower buds I want to do it now while I know they will grow.
A dilemma I’ve faced as well. In my very limited experience, if I see enough adventitious buds spaced well below where I want to top it, I do so.
If all the adventitious buds (ones you can see at the base of each leaf petiole) are gone, I leave it until the next winter to top. The preventitious buds (ones you can’t see at all and are under the bark…undifferentiated cells at first I believe) have time and energy to differentiate the second year below the cut.
Thanks, that’s a good way of looking at it. The first cherry that stalled out had 4 or 5 active buds below the heading cut, so I thought it would be fine, but now I’m remembering I first cut it at ~38" and then down to 30" a few days later, so maybe that induced some extra stress.
I definitely would like to head it as early as possible so as to not “waste” growth this year that I’ll later cut.
Overall I just started second guessing myself. My pruning had been going well, then I did a bunch late winter and had both stellar and disastrous results. The nectarine died back nearly to the rootstock and a Kieffer pear had like 12-18" dieback, plus the stalled out Rainier cherry, but the apricot and a plum are seriously flourishing with a bunch of reactivated dormant buds. I think my overall takeaway is that it was both a rough spring and a mediocre Kieffer, and that I’ll skip winter pruning on peaches in general.
Interesting note about the timing. I did some notching for kicks last year and not much happened. I did some notching on an apricot this early spring and it seems to be doing a little bit, although the growth is still outpaced by the apically dominant buds.
