Summer is an excellent time to do maintenance pruning on the fruit trees in your garden.  Any cutting you do now will help keep trees healthy and manage growth into the fall and winter.

1. Practice prudent pruning

Don’t just simply cut to cut.  Know your tree’s fruiting habits (e.g., does the fruit on your tree grow on old or new wood?) and prune accordingly.  That means looking for fruit buds as you cut and trimming around them to ensure that you’ll have fruit later on.

2. Remember the 3 D’s

Dead, damaged and diseased: these are the three things you need to look for when pruning branches, twigs and leaves.  Everything else should be left alone.

3. Be mindful of human traffic

If your trees are close to an entry or main walkway, trim away tree parts that may be in the way of those who might pass by.

4. Angle your cuts

Prune at a slant away from the tree so that water doesn’t run into the tree’s center.  Depending on the size of branch, you may need to use either pruning or lopping shears or a pruning saw.

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