Summer Pruning in the Orchard

It’s that time of the season: time to prune back the vigorous growth and water sprouts on our fruit trees to maintain and improve shape of both our espalier and our open grown apples (of which there are 2). Now through early July is a good time to get this task done in our zone. This is the final pruning until Winter 2025.

Like winter pruning, this is somewhat of an art form in that you are taking into account your particular tree and its growth habit, and shaping it into a pleasing form for your garden.

General rule of thumb is to prune the vigorous stems back to about 3” from the winter prune. This should be 3 buds or leaf nodes. Sometimes it will be a little longer, and sometimes you might decide to cut it all the way back to the winter cut.

Our plums and apricots are by far the most vigorous fruit trees and thus most challenging to maintain shape, and so are the best examples of summer pruning. Our apple trees that are now fully branched out and trained are less vigorous and thus require fewer cuts to maintain the shape. Basically, they are at maturity. It’s not clear if the plums or apricots will ever grow into such a chill state of being, but so far there’s no indication they will ever slow down.

NOTE: I will update this blog post next week (after I get home) with a second video of our youngest espalier trees and how they are growing so far this year, and how we are training the top branches and what the pruned water sprouts look like, as those trees are much more sparse and thus a bit easier to see the form and what the ambitions are intentions are when pruning.