Pruning Methods and Technical Key Points for Young Bearing Apricot Trees
How to prune young bearing apricot trees? The main task of pruning young bearing apricot trees is to continue developing good scaffold branches, develop good fruiting branch groups, expand the canopy, promote canopy development, and promote early production. Young bearing trees still have a large growth volume, and pruning should still balance three aspects: shaping, expanding the canopy, and fruiting. In terms of pruning...
How to prune young bearing apricot trees?
The main task of pruning young bearing apricot trees is to continue developing good scaffold branches, develop good fruiting branch groups, expand the canopy, promote canopy development, and promote early production. Young bearing trees still have a large growth volume, and pruning should still balance three aspects: shaping, expanding the canopy, and fruiting. In pruning, light pruning should be applied, and the extension branches of main and lateral branches should be headed back by retaining 2/3 of their total length according to their vigor. After apricot trees enter the bearing stage, flower buds form relatively easily, so moderately vigorous and more spreading vegetative branches should be appropriately left unpruned to promote the sprouting of medium and short branches, increase the number of fruiting branches, and after flower formation or fruiting, they should be promptly cut back to develop into fruiting branch groups. For varieties with a strong upright tendency, the relatively thick and upright branches may also bear flower buds, but the flower buds on such branches do not set fruit easily, so branch bending can be used to moderate the growth vigor, stimulate small branches, form flower buds, and become fruiting branches. Apricot trees generally bear fruit better on medium and short branches, while the fruiting rate of long fruiting branches is not high, so long fruiting branches can be appropriately headed back to stimulate branching and develop into fruiting branch groups. Medium and short branches have wide angles and form flower buds easily, and are mostly left unpruned to favor fruiting. For non-scaffold branches, dense, crossing, overlapping, and vigorous branches that disrupt the tree shape should be removed to improve ventilation and light penetration. The growth of competing branches and upright vigorous branches should be controlled. Pruning of young bearing trees should be light rather than heavy, to favor early high yield. However, for weakly growing trees, heavier pruning may be appropriate, removing overly dense branches and thin weak branches, retaining healthy branches, and bending upright vigorous branches flat as temporary branches to stimulate thick medium and short fruiting branches and restore half the tree vigor.