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Have you started your winter pruning? If the leaves have fallen off your apple, pear, plum, peach, or nectarine trees (or any deciduous fruit or nut trees), now’s the time to get started. 



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We talk a lot about pruning because we know it worries more than 50% of home growers. We explain our foolproof 7-step pruning method in this blog.

But before you get started with learning how to prune, it’s fairly important to understand the different parts of your tree and what they do.

So today we thought we’d share some basic pruning terminology. Here’s how we label various parts of the tree:

A two year old plum tree that's had it's winter pruning
A two year old plum tree (still in the establishment pruning phase) after winter pruning

Limbs/branches, sometimes called ‘scaffold’ branches

These are the permanent, structural parts of your fruit tree. We usually recommend pruning your trees into a ‘vase’ shape, with between 6 and 10 limbs, starting from a central point about knee height above the ground.

The photo above is a young plum tree that only has 4 limbs, but has been pruned back hard to encourage more limbs to grow from low in the tree. This technique is called ‘establishment pruning’, and is absolutely crucial to creating a useful shape for your tree right from the start.

Of course, your tree may have a different shape, e.g., espalier, central leader, or more of a wild and possibly completely unpruned shape (those last ones are pretty common!).

Laterals, or side-branches

These are shorter pieces of wood, also called small branches, side branches, shoots or twigs, that grow from the limbs. These are the main fruit-bearing parts of the tree.

Strictly speaking, a lateral refers to one-year-old wood, i.e., the shoots that grew in the summer just gone. To keep things simple we use the word ‘lateral’ to refer to any growth coming from a limb.

A lateral itself may have side shoots, which can be a useful place to shorten the lateral back to.

A plum tree showing the laterals growing from each limb
A plum tree showing the laterals growing from each limb

Spur

A spur is a collection of buds, mainly fruit buds but also leaf buds, on a lateral. Some of these buds may turn into new shoots. The older a spur is, the less likely it is to generate new shoots.

Some fruit trees are much more prone to developing spurs than others, e.g., pears, some apples, and some plums. Apricots can also form spurs. The spurs can keep bearing fruit for years and require little pruning. If they are getting too crowded it’s OK to do some ‘spur pruning’ to thin them out a bit.

A spur on a pear tree
A spur on a pear tree

Buds

Fruit trees have fruit buds (which turn into flowers), and leaf buds (which turn into leaves and shoots). They can also have multiple buds that are a combination of the two.

Fruit buds tend to be fatter and a little furrier looking, and leaf buds tend to be flatter and less significant. This will look a little different on different types of trees, for example, it’s really easy to spot the difference on peach and nectarine trees but can be harder on pears.

It doesn’t really matter if you can tell the difference because the tree’s got it sorted. However, it will add to your knowledge and is a really useful way of making sure you’re not accidentally cutting off all the fruit buds when you pruning. So before you start, have a close look all over the tree to see if you can identify different-looking buds.

Understanding which part of the tree we’re talking about in our blogs and courses makes learning how to prune much easier. Next time you’re gazing lovingly at your fruit tree, make sure you can identify all its different bits!

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