Sea Buckthorn Harvest/Pruning Methods

General Fruit Growing
#1

I was wondering if anyone here was familiar with where on the female sea buckthorn plant next years flowers/fruit grow. It looks to me that it fruits on last years wood, and that new shoots grow from that same place. But I’d like to be sure.

The main reason for asking is to decide how to best harvest this years crop without hurting chances for next year’s. Online many talk about just cutting off the fruit with the branches at harvest; we did that once but it took several years for the trees to regrow enough to fruit again. That may be due to our less than favorable growing conditions, but I’d like not to repeat that.

Thoughts?

3 Likes
#2

Yes, fruits on 2- and 3-year old wood.

The standard advice to cut entire branches, freeze, then smash the branch around would be applied to perhaps 1/3 of the branches, leaving 2/3 to fruit next year.

I found it best to just pinch off the thorn tips and hand-harvest and tolerate the occasional poke. The location of the thorns follows a regular pattern and they become easy to locate.

2 Likes