Crown formation is an important stage in cherry plum growing
A feature of cherry plum is its rather rapid growth. On the one hand, this is a positive property, because in a few years after planting you can get a beautiful lush tree. But there is also a negative side to this - as a result of the thickening of the cherry plum, it begins to hurt, and the yield of an adult tree decreases. If you let everything take its course, soon you will only have to dream about the harvest, and the cherry plum itself will quickly wither away. Therefore, it is very important to know how to properly form the crown of the cherry plum, because both the quantity and quality of the fruit and the overall life of the tree depend on this.
Formative pruning should start as early as the year the seedling is planted, and then remove excess branches annually. A properly formed crown makes it easier to care for the tree and allows you to reduce the height of the cherry plum.
Depending on the cherry plum varieties you can form a tree:
- bush;
- in the form of a bowl (with a sparse-tiered crown).
Immediately after planting, the seedling must be shortened, leaving the trunk no more than 70 cm in height.
Regardless of what shape of the crown of the tree is planned, it is necessary to regularly cut tops and branches that touch, grow down or too close to each other.
Features of the bush form of cherry plum
The easiest option is to give the cherry plum the shape of a bush. In this case, tree care will be minimal - it will be enough to regularly thin out the bush, removing excess shoots in order to avoid thickening, as well as shorten fast-growing long branches.
You should start the main pruning of cherry plum in early spring.
How to make a bowl-shaped cherry plum?
The bowl-like shape of the tree provides good lighting and air exchange in the depth of the crown. To do this, cut out the central conductor, and direct the remaining branches in different directions, bending them to the ground if necessary and fixing them. To stimulate branching, shorten the shoots by 50 cm, and if the branches are shorter, remove a third of their length.
For a sparse-tiered crown shape, skeletal branches in an amount of no more than 5 pieces should be laid at a distance of 70 cm to the soil surface. Regularly remove all lower-growing shoots, and pinch new branches. Since in the first two years cherry plum grows very intensively, and the left shoots can reach up to 2 m in length, they should be shortened in summer, leaving no more than 50 cm.
A distance of at least 45 cm must be observed between tiers, and about 20 cm between strong semi-skeletal branches.