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Martin Brown · 02-09-2011, 08:34 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On 01/09/2011 22:36, wrote:
In ,
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.

You are only supposed to prune plums in good dry weather when they are
growing fairly vigorously. I'd have thought just after flowering would
be too early to be certain of suitable warm dry conditions. We don't
prune our neighbours plum tree at all unless there is a damaged branch
and it seems to stay almost the same size - limited by its rootstock.

They seem to grow to a particular size and then slow down a lot.

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.

I'd be inclined to do it a third of the thinnest back hard, open up the
centre, one third back to half length or 3/4s if nice ones and strongest
branches left as is. Then next year you have to bite the bullet and chop
back the by then very long strong stems by an appropriate amount but
with any luck the moderate ones will be a good size again and you can
pick which new growth to leave on.

If you do short back and sides all at once the tree is inclined to
respond by lots of soft sappy growth mostly going straight upwards. You
are also unlikely to get fruit at all if you massacre it.

Splitting the hard pruning across summer and winter might help prevent
any branches that get really out of hand from damaging the tree. And
also gives you more bites at the cherry. I only winter prune my fruit
trees and try not to let them go wild with non-fruiting growth.

BTW Family trees are even more entertaining to keep balanced. The under
stock is almost always more vigorous than the top stock and will if left
to its own devices take over the bulk of the tree.

Incidentally does anyone have any tips for renovating a 100 year old
peach tree with peach leaf curl and some fungus that affects the fruit?
The fruit looked fine but the flesh inside was no good

(belongs to a newly renovated walled garden not far from where I live)

I am advocating a copper fungicide end of season and at flowering with a
ruthless clearing of all its dead leaves. The historic fruit society
apparently told the owners to grub it up as beyond redemption!

Regards,
Martin Brown