In article ,
Spider wrote:

The damson is a prunus sp., so needs to be pruned in warm, dry weather
from April onwards. This is because the wounds heal more quickly in good
dry weather, so are less likely to succumb to Silver Leaf disease. Now
may be a bit late, but I must confess to pruning a few bits off my plum
today since the weather was good.

Yes, but when? The point is that it has to be pretty drastic,
because the tree has got out of control and there are a lot of
long, spindly branches. My inclination is after it has flowered,
though the other possibility is to pick the fruit and do it now.

To make it very simple: winter pruning apples encourages growth,
summer pruning apples controls growth.

That was the problem :-( I did that, but it didn't respond at
all according to the books (or sanity), and has now got completely
out of shape. Some of this is because it is on a damned modern
dwarfing rootstock, and they always cause misbehaviour, but its
behaviour was truly weird. It has never responded to winter
pruning by new growth, has responded to summer pruning that way,
and is very reluctant to make ANY new growth except at the end
of the longest branches. So what I am planning is a short back
and sides, in the hope that hitting it hard will stimulate it
into behaving more as expected.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.