Summer pruning to keep fruit trees small
Summer pruning slows growth and keeps fruit trees at picking height. When to prune stone fruit, apples and pears in summer, and which cuts to make.
Winter pruning makes a tree grow back harder in spring. Summer pruning does the opposite: it slows the tree down. That makes summer the best time to keep trees small enough to net, thin and pick from the ground.
Why summer pruning works
In summer the tree is using its leaves to build reserves for next year. Removing some leafy growth now reduces those reserves, so regrowth is weaker. Wounds also heal quickly in warm, dry weather, which lowers the risk of disease getting in.
Stone fruit: after harvest
- Prune peaches, nectarines and plums soon after you've picked the fruit.
- Cut back the tallest upright growth to an outward-facing branch at the height you want.
- Remove crowded, crossing and inward-growing shoots to open the centre.
- Apricots and cherries are best pruned now, in dry weather, rather than in winter. Winter cuts on these trees invite fungal and bacterial diseases.
Apples and pears: late summer
Apples and pears carry their fruit on spurs, so summer pruning is about controlling this season's new shoots without losing next year's fruit buds.
- In late summer, once the new shoots have firmed up at the base, shorten side shoots longer than about 20 cm back to three leaves above the cluster of leaves at their base.
- These shortened shoots often form fruit buds for the following season.
- Remove strong upright water shoots entirely.
All fruit trees
- Remove suckers coming up from the rootstock below the graft.
- Cut out dead, damaged and diseased wood whenever you see it.
- Thin out water shoots, leaving one or two where you need to fill a gap.
Don't overdo it
- Leave enough leaves to shade the fruit and branches. Opening a tree up too much in midsummer invites sunburn.
- Avoid pruning just before or during a heatwave.
- As a rule, take off no more than about a fifth of the leafy growth in summer.
Keep a height in mind
Decide on a height you can reach from the ground, often about 2 to 2.5 metres, and hold the tree to it each summer. A tree you can reach is easier to net, thin and pick, and you'll lose less fruit to birds. For the basics of each cut, see how to prune fruit trees.
Take a photo of each tree before and after. In Trees n Bees each tree keeps a photo strip through the seasons, and bulk logging records a morning's pruning on a whole row or block in a few taps, with the hours it took.