The task of each horticulturist is to get a plentiful harvest of beautiful fruits in the summer, which have excellent taste properties. But you can not wait for the result to be inactive, it is important to make certain efforts. If the plum is growing on your site, then it is worth taking care of its proper formation. Consider the features of trimming plums in different periods of its growth.
Why is pruning plums important?
Plum pruning is aimed primarily at growing a healthy, fruit-bearing tree. For the plum, as for other stone fruit, it is characteristic to actively form shoots, which are inexpedient to thicken the crown and form branch-competitors. As a result, the tree becomes disproportionate, which threatens not just a decrease in yield, but a break in its trunk. The widespread opinion that pruning plums can harm a tree due to the release of gums by damaged branches can be attributed to myths. Firstly, if you do not take care of the plum tree, sooner or later the gum will begin to appear anyway, and secondly, if you know how to properly cut the plum, there will be no problems. To do this, you need to get a good pruner and a garden sander to process the slices.
Spring pruning prunes
Since pruning the plum in the fall can provoke the withered tree to damage the frost areas near the cut, it is practiced mostly spring pruning. Annual pruning of plums in spring is two steps - shortening and thinning branches. In terms of thinning, all excess shoots are removed, and special attention is paid to shoots growing inward, they must be cut off first. As the plum fructifies on numerous growths of the last year, they can be shortened so that the tree does not grow tall and that the next season there are more fruit branches. Usually, half or a third of the branch is cut off. However, how to intensively cut the plum in the spring depends on the nature of its growth. If the crown is actively thickening, pay attention to its thinning, if the branches are bare, then shorten them.
Prune young plum
The first pruning of a young plum is carried out already when the tree is planted. Leave one main escape, which will assume the role of the trunk. Side branches growing at a distance of less than 40 cm from the soil surface, and branches that grow at an acute angle, are removed completely. The remaining branches are cut by one-third or half to form a skeleton. It is optimal to create a sparse-tiered shape of the crown with a stem height of about 40 cm, with three branches on the first tier, two on the second and further with single branches on each tier. A year later, the trunk is cut in the spring above a good kidney and again cut off by one third the side branches, being guided by the fact that the upper bud gives an escape not inside the crown but outwards. Shoots that grow below the branches, which are designated as skeletal, are also removed "on the ring". It is also very important to get rid of radical shoots, so that they do not relax the plum and do not become a source of infection of the tree.
Rejuvenating pruning prunes
If the growth of the crown was weakened, the branches began to be denuded, and the fruits began to lose their qualities, a rejuvenating pruning of the plum is necessary. To fully restore the plum will take more than one year of diligence. First of all, the tree is intensively thinned, leaving only healthy branches. At the next stage pruning of the old plum is reduced to the replacement of the main skeletal branches by their lateral branches. The central stem branch is also cut off over the young shoot. In the years of rejuvenating pruning the plum will need fertilizing, supporting its forces, providing health and growth.