When to Prune Cherry Trees UK: The Complete Guide

The key to a healthy cherry tree is pruning, so if you’re not pruning fruiting cherry trees, it’s probably time you start! Pruning isn’t just about keeping your cherry tree tidy; it plays a crucial role in its overall health, productivity, and longevity.

Without proper pruning, cherry trees can become overcrowded, prone to disease, and produce smaller or fewer fruits. By learning when and how to prune, you can encourage stronger branches, better airflow, and a more abundant harvest of delicious cherries for yourself and pollinating insects.

In this blog, we are going guide you through when to prune cherry fruit trees!

The Benefits of Pruning Cherry Trees

There are many benefits to pruning cherry trees, including:

• It keeps the cherry tree healthy by removing any diseased branches and improving airflow, reducing the chance of any fungal problems.
• By pruning, you get larger and better fruit produced.
• Cherry trees can grow quite large, so by pruning, you can keep it managable so it fits better in smaller gardens and are easier to harvest.
• Pruning after harvest helps to stop infections like silver leaf disease and bacterial canker.

When to Prune Fruiting Cherry Trees

Fruiting cherry trees are typically divided into sweet cherries and sour (tart) cherries, and each should be pruned at slightly different times. Both only need one annual prune, as over-pruning can shock the tree; however, this one prune is very important for Acid Cherry trees, as without it, they bear fruit on the ends of long branches, which can break.

Sweet Cherry Trees

Sweet Cherry Trees prefer late summer pruning. If you have established trees, for all the delicious fruit buds produce and drip, and then this is the perfect time, it is usually around July or August. If the tree is brand new and hasn’t produced any fruit yet, trim it to keep its shape and prevent branches crossing and becoming overcrowded. Summer pruning encourages airflow, helps produce better fruit quality and directs energy into next year’s crop.

Acid Cherry Trees

Sour cherry trees can tolerate pruning slightly later than sweet cherries. They often favour winter pruning or early spring, but light pruning can also be done in summer after harvest. Summer pruning helps control vigorous growth and improves airflow without stimulating excessive new shoots.

When to Prune Flowering Cherry Trees

Flowering cherry trees should be pruned after they have finished blooming, usually in mid to late summer. Pruning earlier may remove flower buds formed the previous season, reducing the number of blossoms. Focus on removing dead, damaged, or crossing branches and maintaining the tree’s natural shape.

Tools You Will Need To Prune a Cherry Tree

• A Pruning Saw
• Pruning Shears
• Gloves
• Cleaning Products

The Age of A Cherry Tree

For young cherry trees, annual pruning is essential. It encourages the tree to produce a full canopy in your desired shape and stimulates fruit production and the young tree’s health when it grows back.

For established cherry trees, pruning is a much smaller job. It’s more about removing dead and damaged branches and leaving fruiting branches. This is mainly because a big prune will shorten the lifespan of your mature tree, although it will give you a bumper year of fruit production!

How to Keep a Cherry Tree Small?

Regular pruning is a key factor in keeping cherry trees small and manageable for all kinds of gardens, whilst also helping fruit production.

By pruning cherry trees to a size you feel fits your garden in the late summer, you are allowing the tree to put energy into next year’s production of fruit rather than small, fast-growing branches that don’t bear fruit.

Pick a shape like open centre, which encourages light and allows sunlight to reach through the whole tree, or an option like central leader, which keeps the tree tall but helps maintain branches and keep it manageable.

Remove long branches, vigorous vertical shoots and any damaged wood branches.

How to Prune Cherry Trees

1. The first step is to cut off any dead, diseased, or damaged branches. If you have any branches crossing over or growing inwards, remove these to improve the airflow. Make all cuts at a slight angle and 1-2 cm from a healthy bud.
2. After a few years of growing seasons, the canopy of the cherry fruit tree may become bushy on top, stopping the light from filtering through to the fruiting branches. To rectify this, you can thin this out.
3. If your tree has long, larger branches, reduce them to keep the tree compact; don’t cut more than 40 cm from the main trunk.
4. To encourage the tree to grow more fruiting spurs, cut back the previous year’s growth on the branches by about a third.