How should bayberry be pruned after fruit harvest? What are the precautions?

Whenever the bayberry harvest season arrives, many fruit growers are so busy picking bayberries that they neglect management after harvest. The bayberry harvest period runs from June to August, and the trees will begin to sprout new shoots and undergo flower bud differentiation, requiring a large supply of nutrients to speed up the recovery of tree vigor, cultivate excellent fruiting mother branches and promote flower bud differentiation.So how should bayberry be pruned after fruit harvest? What are the precautions?

1. How should bayberry be pruned after fruit harvest?

When pruning bayberry trees, the principle of “prune according to tree shape, shape according to branch, shape without rigidity, form without disorder” should be followed, improving light and ventilation conditions and making full use of the tree's space and light.

Bayberry tree pruning is roughly divided into two sessions. The first is after fruit picking, that is, the period from the end of June to early July, using methods such as heading, thinning and wounding, sawing off higher branches (opening a skylight). During winter pruning, excessively dense branches, upright branches, competing branches and diseased or pest-infested branches should be thinned out, with no stubs left when thinning branches, and the opening angle and orientation of the main branches should be adjusted. On the large scale, the tree structure should be adjusted, and fruiting branches that have extended outward and have not been pruned for years should be reasonably shortened back to keep the canopy compact; the internal structure of the bayberry tree should be adjusted, removing strong branches on the upper side and dense weak branches on the lower side, crossing and overlapping branches, controlling competing branches, and using auxiliary branches to select and cultivate small and medium-sized fruiting branches. The second session is in February of the following year, mainly pruning small branches of the bayberry tree, cutting off diseased and pest-infested branches, dead branches, densely growing branches, straight upright water sprouts and late autumn shoots; for trees with few flowers, cut off some flowerless branches, and for trees with many flowers, cut off some flowering branches; for overly vigorous trees with low fruit set and low yield, ring cutting, ring barking, bark inversion and root pruning can be used to control the vigor of the bayberry tree.

2. Precautions for bayberry shaping and pruning

1. Tree shape transformation should be completed year by year

When sawing large branches in summer, only 1-3 main-branch-sized large branches and 2-4 secondary main-branch-sized thick branches should be sawed off each year. If the branching angle of the main branches and secondary main branches kept is insufficient, methods such as propping, pulling and hanging should be used to adjust them.

2. Strictly control shoots

After sawing large branches in summer, new shoots sprout near the saw cuts and pruning cuts. Use the space to select and keep 2-3 strong shoots to cultivate fruiting mother branches. Remove excess new shoots promptly.

3. Pruning amount depends on the tree

For trees in an on-year and weak trees, the pruning amount is 1/4-1/3 of all leaves on the tree, and for trees in an off-year and strong trees, it is 1/6-1/5. 2.3 When sawing large branches, stubs should not be left. When sawing large branches, they should be sawed or cut off from the base of the large branch, leaving no stub, to reduce the sprouting of new shoots. The saw cut surface should slope slightly downward, and a wound healing agent should be applied to protect the wound. With a hand saw, first make a shallow cut a small half-circle on the underside of the branch, then saw down from slightly above the fork point, slanting toward the lower part.

4. Strengthen cultivation management

Do a good job in a timely manner of management work such as soil, fertilizer and water management, flower and fruit protection, and disease and pest control, to ensure that “shaping and pruning” achieves the expected effect. The overall requirements after pruning are: the spacing between tree canopies of adjacent plants ≥20cm, a light path of more than 50cm between rows, tree canopy height controlled within 2.5m-3.5m, trunk height 30cm-40cm, the tree body having 3-4 evenly arranged main branches, each main branch having 2-3 mutually staggered secondary main branches, the branching angle of main branches and secondary main branches ≥45°, the tree body dwarfed, the canopy open, forming a low-trunk natural open-center shape or a low-trunk sparse stratified shape.