Summer Pruning - Yay or Nay?

General Fruit Growing
41

Apples are one thing. Stone fruit is a different animal. Rubbing off upward shoots in spring is helpful. But my peaches and plums overwhelm me. I’ve had a wet summer, and my new growth in peaches and plums is 10’ in height with diameters see at least as large as your thumb.

I hardly fertilize at all. So I’m at my wits end to we control size. I’ve pruned 25-50 we water sprouts off each tree. I’m guessing about 50 percent of the foliage. And it’s hot miserable work during 90 degree temps and 70 per cent humidity. Probably a little different than Maine.

But my main point is the rationale for summer pruning to control vigor—remove the foliage to limit energy storage in the roots and, hopefully, reduce vigor next year. I’m not sure it will work. But it makes sense to me, and I’m willing to suffer a few miserable days with the hope it will reduce size next year.

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42

I’m having the same kind of growth here, but consider pruning peaches relatively quick work compared to apples- how many trees are you growing?

I have a TangO’s tree that has completely failed me because of its excessive vigor. The fruit gets very big and has so many split pits that brown rot and a black rot cannot be controlled with fungicide because rot starts in the split pits where it can’t be reached with sprays.

We’ve had a string of excessively wet springs and the tree is surrounded by mulched nursery trees so even frequent spring and early summer pruning has not noticeably reduced the trees vigor.

I am trying to rise to the challenge, and next spring the tree gets a very aggressive root pruning- now that’s work. But springs are usually cool.

43

I will summer prune my Novamac B9 espellar… late August.

It has one more apple on now and should be done by then.

Off the 4 main scaffold branches it has grown several nice long latteral branches… (some 2 3 ft long) I will do the 3 bud pruning on each of those to encourage fruit buds to form.

I will do a litte bit of thinning too.

In the video he recommends doing this mid Aug - first of September. He says that terminal buds should be forming on the tips of latteral branches.

TNHunter

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44

I have 36 trees in total, including 10 peaches/nectaries and 6 Japanese plums/pluots. Not that many, but I’m not that young. I’ve let these trees get too big, and they’re on a hillside, two factors that make pruning more challenging. Also, I need to net the trees because I have severe bird predation. So I really need to control vigor. My apples and pears need vigor control too, but their vigor is at least partially controlled by semi-dwarf rootstock.

I’ve heard of root pruning but never tried it. Do you have any advice regarding root pruning?

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45

this is the vid i watched also.

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46

i summer prune to keep my trees small so i can reach everything from the ground. I prune in winter for shape, or bigger branches. and i nip off growing shoots any time I’m nearby the trees, like water sprouts I’ll prune any time

i read a bunch of espalier stuff though I’m not growing anything as one. i tried to read the PDF at the start of the thread but it’s missing at that link now

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47

I’m not really qualified as I’m planning on doing it for the first time next spring. What I know is you need to do it around first growth in spring. I will attempt to cut about half the roots and see how it goes. I will cut a couple feet from the trunk on both sides.

48

I believe root pruning is a very old method of pruning from what I remember. I believe the French did this. Perhaps I am mistaken.

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49

I started the 3 bud summer pruning in 2024 and again this year on my Euro pears. This method has worked well in controlling the tree size and I think that it will promote earlier fruiting. Pruning is different from one person to another but his presentation is clear to me and easy to understand.

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50

I start spreading my pear limbs to a wide angle as soon as they emerge from the trunk on my trees. It’s difficult to prevent bark encroachment after the limbs get to growing. I’m hoping that adding the 3 bud summer pruning will get the Euro pears to fruiting soon.

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51

Like all pruning methods, root pruning has been going on for a long time and is routinely done by commercial growers using tractor driven blades. You probably think of it as antiquated because manual root pruning is rarely done nowadays. I bet it was done in Asia first.

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52

Of course, the curious can always ask CHAT. Sometimes the info is wrong, but most of it is correct and it is massive and quick.

What is the known history of root pruning

ChatGPT said:

Root pruning has a surprisingly long and varied history — older than most people realize — and it’s been reinvented multiple times for different crops and goals.
Here’s the big-picture timeline of how it shows up in the literature and grower practice:

1. Antiquity – Early Orchard Training

  • Ancient China – There are references in Qi Min Yao Shu (6th century CE) to cutting roots of fruit trees in nurseries to promote fibrous root growth for transplanting.
  • Ancient Rome – Columella (De Re Rustica, 1st century CE) and Pliny mention root cutting in vineyards and orchards both for transplanting and to restrain excessive vine growth.
    • In vineyards, this was more like “trenching” to sever roots that were drawing water from beyond the desired zone.
  • In these early periods, root pruning was manual — trenching with spades, mattocks, or hoes.

2. 17th–19th Century – Nursery Practice & Orchard Vigor Control

  • European nursery trade – By the 1600s, systematic root pruning was common for nursery stock, especially apples and pears, to improve transplant survival.
    • Young trees were undercut one or more times during their years in the nursery row to encourage a compact, fibrous root ball.
  • Fruit walls and espaliers – In 18th–19th century France and England, root pruning was sometimes used on pears and apples trained against walls to keep them in scale and promote fruiting spurs instead of long vegetative shoots.
    • This could be done by digging a trench 2–3 ft from the trunk and severing roots with a spade — sometimes in combination with summer pruning.
  • Vineyards in Europe – In Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne, periodic trenching in parts of the vineyard to sever deep roots was used to increase wine quality by inducing moderate water stress and concentrating flavor.

3. Late 19th–Early 20th Century – Orchard & Vineyard “Taming”

  • U.S. pomology books from ~1890–1920 discuss root pruning as a method for:
    • Reducing excessive vegetative growth in young apple and pear orchards.
    • Bringing overgrown shade trees into flowering.
  • In California’s young wine industry (early 1900s), some growers experimented with mechanical trenchers to restrict root spread — but this was labor-heavy and not widely adopted.
  • Root pruning also became part of peach nursery production, where deep sinkers made lifting trees difficult — undercutting was introduced to make digging easier and survival better.

4. Mid-20th Century – Mechanization & Decline

  • The rise of tractors and vineyard/orchard mechanization in the 1940s–1960s led to the first mechanical root pruners — coulters or undercutting blades mounted on tractor frames.
  • These were mainly used in:
    • Grapes (to control vigor and berry size)
    • Orchard replants (to cut old roots before replanting)
  • By the 1970s, many commercial tree fruit growers in North America had largely abandoned routine root pruning because:
    • New dwarfing rootstocks for apples reduced the need.
    • Increased herbicide use eliminated the sod competition that root pruning partly mimicked.
    • Irrigation and fertilization programs were designed for maximum vigor and yield.

5. Late 20th–21st Century – Precision Root Pruning

  • Wine grapes – Revived in the 1980s–1990s in Australia, California, and Europe as part of “vine balance” programs to match canopy size to fruit load.
  • Apples and pears – Reintroduced in high-density plantings on vigorous soils to improve color and fruiting, especially in parts of Europe and New Zealand.
  • Stone fruit – California, Spain, Chile: mechanical and manual root pruning researched for controlling fruit size, reducing split pits, and improving color.
  • Horticultural science – Studies now use root pruning to manipulate:
    • Water status (controlled stress)
    • Nutrient uptake
    • Carbohydrate allocation
    • Timing of vegetative growth vs. reproductive growth

6. Nursery & Transplanting – Still the Steady Use

  • The one place root pruning never left is in nursery production, where both undercutting and manual root cutting are still done to make bare-root stock diggable and transplant-ready.
  • The practice has even been adapted for container production with air-pruning pots and mechanical root pruning blades in potting lines.

Key Themes Over Time

  • Originally – transplant survival & fruiting promotion.
  • Later – vigor control, quality improvement, and mechanical harvest suitability.
  • Modern – precision canopy/fruit balance, pest/disease management (via microclimate), and water/nutrient stress timing.
53

As Alan’s chat repy said, its is commonly done in nursery stock production. Usually to create a denser root mass, or shorten the branches internodes on vigorous varieties like Platanus, Ulmus, or Acer varieties.

In 2008-2011 we root pruned a lot of varieties just to slow them down. We planted 42k and 46k trees in 2007 and 2008 respectfully. Then the bottom fell out of the shade tree market due to the banking/housing market and we knew we had to stretch out our market window and cut production.

We used a 24" coulter down the sides of the young trees mounted to a tractor. Trees in the market range (2" and up) we would actually use our tree spades and set it up to cut the roots 2" smaller than the ball we would normally harvest them with. They were truncated spades, so any tap roots wouldn’t be cut.

We were on drip irrigation so we didn’t experience any moisture stress and it worked pretty well. We would mark all root pruned trees with a tags when they were pruned and what size of cut we made.

The bare root growers out in Oregon will often undercut aggressive varieties to shorten the internodes of the branches or to improve the root structure of course rooted varieties.

One grower would under cut their oaks which can have some issues in transplanting. A 6’-8’ branched red oak liner, with a 2 year old top would often have roots that were 7 years old.

We would also and still do root prune large trees that were reaching what we considered their maximum size so we would have a longer sales window. 4" trees up to 6" trees. Mainly Elms and maples.

Some varieties responed better than others.

We liked to cut them in late summer when the tips were hardened off, but the trees were tough. We wanted some stress.

Not really sure how this ties into fruit production.

I may try root pruning on some of my pears this year that have given me zero pears in 10 years. What the heck.

I’m also setting up drip irrigation so the peaches, plums, and pears don’t moisture stress in September and October hoping to get them to set better flower buds. I have large trees on the perimeter of my orchard, that compete very aggressively for any moisture available. I trimmed them back so shade isn’t an issue, but the roots suck the orchard dry.

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54

What is meant by “better” flower buds? more? more hardy? something else?

I don’t know about plums and pears but I do know know a bit about peaches which are kind of different. They set their fruit buds in early summer on new growth only. As in, the tree “decides” based on conditions in June how many flower buds to set. So if you’re not getting flowers on peaches it has to do with something happening in early summer or with pruning.

When I say pruning problems it would be something like pruning so much that the tree is only doing vegetative growth (which seems unlikely) or you are cutting off all the new growth which is where the flower buds are (also seems unlikely).

Also, I try not to encourage any growing late in the season because I’m worried the new growth won’t harden before it freezes in my area. So I’d be nervous to irrigate a bunch in fall. I do water my young trees in fall if it has been dry. We tend to get some extreme weather variations because of the valley. Maybe I’m being overly cautious with this - so hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in.

55

Getting flower buds to survive. If they start to form in June and things get too dry, they stop developing in a healthy fashion. I believe peaches are sensitive to being too dry. Apples not so much. Thats why I have about 200 wild apple and crabapples on my place. They like it just the way it is.

You dont water excessively in the fall, you maintain an ample amount of water in July, August, and September to keep the trees healthy. Then pull things back depending on the weather to send them into winter.

I irrigated about 600 acres of shade trees on drip this way. We would get damage to some varieties of trees when they would just get too dry. If you exceed the carrying capacity of the land, they will dry things up in a hurry.

We would see cracks and dead spots on trunks, that we use to attribute as winter damage. Once we went to drip, a lot of that damage disappeared. I referred to it as fall drought stress. Prior to drip we used large travelers (300 to 400 GPM) that would irrigate 10 acres a day and moved by a crew. With drip we could do 30 acres a day and then do another 30 at night and set them to run automatically on the weekend.

September and October are very dry months. At least where I am.
Peaches need extra love. The surrounding big trees complicate the issue even more.

We grew about 1000 trees to the acre. So extra water was needed if you are going to exceed what the land can grow naturally.

I was on couse last summer with pruning and growth. 16 peach trees, 5 varieties, and zero blooms in the spring. I may have done a few things wrong, but I think the fact we had zero precipitation in August and September contributed to my issues.

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56

My bearing age fruit tree nursery is all of 3 acres, and that includes our house, vegetable garden and extensive orchard. We do a lot of what you do, only with hand tools like a King of Spades spade, shovels and cultivating forks. I also manage my trees without irrigation except for maybe 50 trees in 25 gallon pots. When we have spring droughts I do run around with a hose to save newly planted trees, the rest are on their own and have survived the kind of droughts we get for decades now. I’m in down-state New York, less than an hour from the city- rain is pretty reliable here. I come from S. CA so I appreciate that. .

We use quite a few Carl Whitcomb knitted bags (his second in-ground gro-bag invention). Our bare root trees are planted over sheets of plastic to keep the roots relatively shallow and to capture some extra rain water. We usually sell them when they reach about 2.5" diameter and are properly pruned, well branched trees, usually already bearing crop.

I sell directly to my customers or to landscapers and get a premium price because no one has what I grow- a selection of fruit trees tailored to my region based on what works in my own orchard.

I only sell about 100 trees a year but a lot of those trees I end up managing in private home orchards so it turned out to be an essential part of what made my little business work. I spend half the year pruning the fruit trees on the orchards I manage, charging artesan prices for my work. I also do all the other work required for the majority of those orchards, from spraying to thinning fruit by hand.

When you manage home orchards full time in a wide variety of soils and sites, you have to meet a lot of challenges that teach what you’d never learn at a single site.

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57

I did this last year. I’ll do some again this year. But it’s been a baaaad year for FB and I may have to take down one of the pear trees that I was warned about. “Both are trouble” according to @hambone. And he was right.
This is terrible, but I think I got my tags mixed up and not sure now if the tree is an Anjou or a Bartlett pear. I’ll start cutting and see if there is any clean before I get to the main trunk.
I did a lot of 3-bud pruning on these pears, because they were out of control, height-wise.

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58

I had to take my Grimes Golden to just above the graft FB went all the way to the trunk.

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59

My first 6 fruit trees were apples 12 years ago. Got a few apples but must admit it was a total failure.

I started again about 4 years ago. I did summer prunning as directed by Orwin. To my surprise this year they all flowered and fruited. I want to say that the summer prunning helped a lot. I also got more disease resistant varities which I am sure also helped.

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60

I’d saw off the main trunk on both and bark graft next Spring to Potomac and Magness.

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