On 10/08/2016 18:20, Ermin Trude wrote:
On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 17:42:14 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 10:47:53 -0500, Ermin Trude
wrote:

Has anyone any experience of pollarding cherry trees please?

We have a couple of very large cherry trees in the garden with lots of
bough but very little leaf and thin covering of blossom each spring.

I am minded to pollard the trees to make them far more compact and to
reduce bough length in doing so. Hopefully this would also concentrate
the blossom.

Has anyone tried this and with what result? I'll forgo the bloosom for
the first year but would hope to see it in future years - for this
reason I'd not be doing both at the same time.

Thanks

Whatever you do, make sure you do it in the summer, to minimise the
possibility of infection by silver leaf or canker. In summer, wounds
have a chance to heal while the tree is in growth, but in the winter the
tree is dormant and wounds remain open for a great deal longer, allowing
infection to enter.

Thanks Chris - have you done any pollarding yourself or is it just
pruning?

Pollarding always looks a bit too brutal and ugly for my taste.

I haven't ever done this but a neighbour had some professional tree
surgeons in to prune some very large flowering cherry trees - getting on
for 50 years old and 40+' high. Spectacular in flower but shading their
entire garden out. They recommended cutting back by about 1/3 to 1/2 and
the owner chose to have them cut back by 1/4 to 1/3. I was impressed how
they did it with a guy on the ground directing the bloke with the
chainsaw where to cut out to make a nice balanced tree frame.

The trees quickly bounched back - responding to pruning with rapid
growth. Flowering was less prolific in the first year. She now
understands why they wanted to take a bit more off.

My instinct is that it is already a bit late for such brutal pruning
this year because of the risk of silver leaf infection in the wounds. It
is a tricky balancing act between not disturbing nesting birds and
avoiding potentially disastrous fungal infections.

Regards,
Martin Brown