When to prune apple trees, plums, cherries and pears

Pruning apples from November to March

Prune an apple tree while it is dormant: from leaf fall in November until the buds break in late March. December, January and February are the middle of that window and the best of it. Without leaves the framework is easy to read, and a cut made now calluses over cleanly when growth restarts.

Pick a dry, mild day, above freezing. Wood cut in a hard frost shatters at the edges, and a wet cut is an open door for canker, a fungus that kills bark and spreads on damp winter air. If rain is forecast, wait.

Best time to prune apple trees

Late winter suits most garden apples, and the tree's own response is the reason. A hard cut in December pushes a rush of strong shoots the following summer, which is the last thing a tree that is growing well already needs. Wait until February and the regrowth is calmer.

Young trees are the exception. Start training an apple as soon as it goes in and go back each winter while the framework is built. Once the shape is right, thin the growth each year rather than cutting it hard.

How the fruiting habit changes the cut

Read the buds before you cut, because they tell you what to protect. Spur bearing apples, which means most garden varieties, carry fruit on short stubby spurs on wood two years old and older. Those spurs are the crop, so the work is about getting light and air to them.

Tip bearing apples, such as Discovery and Worcester Pearmain, fruit at the ends of last year's shoots. Shorten those shoots and the crop goes with them, so take out whole branches back to a good replacement instead.

Dead, diseased and broken wood out first, then anything crossing or rubbing, then the congested middle. Cut to a bud or a side shoot, never to a stub.

Which fruit follows the dormant rule

Apples, pears and quinces follow one rule: prune while dormant, on a dry day, above freezing. That one window covers the winter work on most garden fruit. Some jobs ignore the calendar: dead, broken and diseased wood comes out on any dry day, and so does a branch rubbing against a neighbour. Everything else waits for the right season for the species in front of you. Ornamental garden trees follow different rules again, which the garden tree pruning page sets out.

Why pears take less pruning than apples

Pears follow the apple rule with one difference: prune them less. Pear wood is brittle and a pear replaces lost growth slowly, so a heavy winter cut leaves gaps in the crown that take years to close. Take out dead, diseased and crossing wood, shorten what has grown too long, and stop there.

Pears fruit on spurs, like most apples, and the best crops come on wood three or four years old. Winter is the time for structure, and a light tidy in summer helps the fruit ripen on a wall trained tree. Quinces are pruned on the same calendar and carry their fruit at the tips of the current season's shoots, so those young shoots stay.

Plums and damsons in late spring and summer

Plums and damsons are pruned from late spring into summer, usually June to August, and silver leaf is the reason. That fungus releases its spores in damp air from autumn to spring and gets in through fresh cuts, so a winter wound is an open door. A tree that catches it loses branches over the seasons that follow, and the RHS sets out the symptoms to look for.

Keep the work light: dead wood, crossing branches, congested growth. A plum that has never been pruned wants the job spread over several summers. Our fruit tree pruning service does this work through the summer months.

Sweet cherries and acid cherries

Cherries work the same way. Sweet cherries are pruned in early summer, after the fruit is picked, and acid cherries just after flowering, both for the same silver leaf reason. Cherry wood is slow to seal, so keep cuts small and work one limb at a time.

An old cherry is often better left alone than cut hard. Take out dead wood and leave the rest, because heavy pruning on old cherry wood invites gumming and decay.

Pruning fruit in July and August

Summer pruning does the opposite job to winter pruning. Cutting in July and August slows a tree down instead of pushing it on, because the leaves you take away are the ones making the food. It suits a tree that has grown too large, a trained form on a wall, and fruit you want to ripen in good light.

On a free standing tree, thin crowded growth and leave the main limbs alone. Trained forms on a wall are the other half of the summer job, and they are covered below.

Espalier fruit tree

A tree trained on a wall is pruned on a different rhythm. After planting, the framework is built over three or four years: one tier of branches each year, tied to horizontal wires spaced about 400mm apart, with the vertical leader shortened to build the tier above.

Once the tiers are full, summer pruning alone keeps the tree in shape. Cut this season's shoots back to three or four leaves above the spur system in July or August, and tie in the shoots that will extend the framework. Structural cuts wait for winter. Wall training suits apples on a dwarfing rootstock, pears and plums, and it earns its space in a small garden because the fruit ripens against the warmth of the wall. Keeping an established espalier in shape is the kind of work our fruit tree pruning service does each summer.

Orchard pruning

An apple left untouched for twenty years can usually be brought back, but not in one winter. Renovate over three or four seasons. In the first, take out dead, diseased and crossing wood and any limb that rubs, then stop. The tree needs enough leaf to feed itself.

In the second winter, thin the congested centre and shorten the longest limbs back to wood that can carry fruit. Expect a rush of strong shoots, which is the tree answering lost wood with growth.

By the third or fourth winter the framework is readable again. Take more than a quarter of the canopy in one year and the tree answers with dense regrowth and little fruit. Where the space needs a different tree, our tree planting service starts again with a bare root tree.

Thinning the crop and watering young trees

Pruning is one part of the year. A fruit tree thins its own crop in June, dropping what it cannot carry, and a gardener can help by taking the smallest fruitlets out of the clusters, leaving one to a cluster on a cooker and two on a dessert apple. A tree carrying less fruit gives better fruit.

Water a young tree through dry spells for its first three summers, keep grass and weeds clear of the trunk, and mulch the root zone in spring without piling it against the bark. Netting goes over the tree as the fruit colours if birds are the problem, and fallen fruit is cleared up rather than left, because it carries wasps and rot into the year that follows. Our garden maintenance round covers this work through the season.