It feels like I’ve written this article about fruit tree pruning before. Maybe even twice? Fruit tree pruning is a perennial favorite. Every year, it’s a hot topic in many forms and at various levels: at your home. You simply can’t escape it. Even our classic, beautifully shaky, sometimes 10-year-old videos on pruning are bestsellers, watched over and over again each year… The uncertainty about fruit tree pruning is fundamental and profound: many hobby gardeners prefer reading about pruning or watching videos rather than doing it practically.
I understand this well. When I started working in fruit growing over 30 years ago, I faced 15 hectares of orchards and didn’t know how I would manage. Okay, maybe it was just 10 hectares, just 20-30,000 trees. It wasn’t just the sheer number of trees, but the “art” of fruit tree pruning that scared me: How could I learn it so quickly? Would I prune correctly? Well, I pruned all the trees on the fruit farm every bitterly cold winter in the mid-80s, together with my apprentice (who knew much more than I did), and surprisingly, these trees bore enough fruit the following autumn. The lesson I learned was that fruit trees, despite their sensitivity, are patient beings and can forgive a lot. So read this article with the ultimate 10 rules and then go out and prune your fruit trees! It’s quite simple, there are no real mistakes – and the tree will teach you how to improve with its reaction.
1. Pruning a Fruit Tree is a Dialogue, but Someone Must Start the Conversation
Just do it! Although it’s advisable to wear something more solid than sneakers for fruit tree pruning, if you don’t start the conversation with the tree, it won’t respond. So prune it to the best of your knowledge (and please after reading the 10 pruning rules here). The tree will tell you in the following months what it thinks about your actions. Observe carefully how it reacts to your pruning measures… But you don’t need to be afraid: the “fruit tree” system is patient, designed to survive even extreme interventions and turn them into positives. Trees have learned through evolution to expect anything: branches break, entire crown sections are blown away, frost comes in May, and winter starts in October… What harm can this unstable gardener with the funny, shiny metallic fruit do to me…
2. The More You Prune, the More the Tree Grows
This is the actual paradox of fruit tree pruning: the more you prune, the more the tree grows. It’s a natural reaction: it wants to replace its lost organs as quickly as possible. Often, the new growth is even larger than the old. This fundamental response must be considered during pruning: for instance, when training a young fruit tree, you cut it back by 20-30% each year to develop a strong, stable crown through vigorous growth. Conversely, for a mature apple tree in full production, you minimize pruning to avoid stimulating too much vegetative growth.
3. Less is More: Fewer Radical Cuts Instead of Many Small Ones
For the same reason (more pruning = more growth), it is almost always better to make a few radical cuts than to snip everywhere. This way, you achieve more with a single cut (ideally solving a fundamental problem in the tree’s structure) and do not stimulate excessive growth responses. An exception might be after years of crop failure: then a large portion of buds are set for fruit production, making it sensible to cut back the old fruit wood to reduce expected yield and prevent biennial bearing.
4. Horizontal Branches Bear Fruit, Vertical Branches Grow
Besides the pruning paradox (rule #2), this is the most important rule: a horizontal branch barely grows but bears more fruit, tending towards generative growth. Conversely, a vertical branch grows vegetatively, becoming stronger and taller but lacks time and energy for fruit production.
5. Tying Instead of Pruning – Making Pruning Almost Unnecessary
If your goal is to keep a fruit tree small while ensuring regular, large yields, tying is often better than pruning. Steep or overly steep branches are tied horizontally to set fruit faster and more reliably. For apple trees, the lowest branch tier should be horizontal, with higher branches potentially even tied below horizontal if the tree should only be about 200-250 cm tall. Nothing curbs growth like a large, regular fruit yield. For pear trees, the first branch tier should always be slightly above horizontal to prevent the tree from growing too tall and overbuilding due to its strong apical dominance.
6. Pruning Brings Order to the Tree
Pruning isn’t an art, nor is it a science, and certainly not mathematics or physics. The best approach is to use common sense, complemented with a touch of aesthetics. A bit of a sense of order helps too: cross-growing and inward-growing branches hinder light penetration into the tree. Also, if subordinate elements of the crown become too dominant, they overshadow and hinder more important, yield-bearing branches. Hence, the rule: if a subordinate branch becomes more than half the diameter of the main branch, it should be removed. For stone fruit, a stub of 10-20 cm is left as a basis for new, appropriate growth; for pome fruit, you can cut closer since new shoots can easily sprout from the branch collar.
7. Handling Water Sprouts
You know the scene: the large fruit tree makes water sprouts every year, and the gardener prunes them every winter, but they seem to multiply. We’ve learned that pruning leads to more growth; many cuts lead to much more growth. How do you break this cycle? One way is to tear off the water sprouts instead of cutting them, removing the basal dormant buds and reducing regrowth. Another way is to do nothing, allowing the water sprouts to bear fruit, which may bend them down under the weight, reducing their vigor.
8. When Summer Pruning is Better
The specialized pruning of water sprouts (rule #7) is best done in summer. Prune the now fruit-bearing water sprouts carefully, removing those not becoming useful side branches and fruit wood. The crop helps limit the tree’s reaction, and the timing around the longest day helps keep the tree in check. Removing leaves also reduces the tree’s response. For large cuts, the tree’s active metabolism in summer better heals wounds, which can be further aided with wound sealants.
9. Balancing Vegetative Growth and Fruit Set
The goal for mature trees in full production is to balance vegetative growth and fruit set. With minimal growth and many fruits, a stronger cut may wake the tree up (preventing premature aging), while strong growth with little yield calls for minimal pruning, tying branches flat where possible.
10. Pruning is a Dialogue – Observe and Listen
We want to understand the tree, interpret its language. We give it a message with our pruning, and over the growing season, we see and hear how it reacts. From this, we draw conclusions for next year’s pruning. Pruning should be a dialogue. There are no completely wrong cuts (at worst, just inappropriate ones). The tree will send back an appropriate message, and we must learn to understand it. Your pruning will improve yearly, and your tree will get closer to the ideal balance between fruit yield and growth.
Just like in life, this goal may never be fully reached but can be approached.