Detailed Explanation of Plum Blossom Branch Training and Pruning Methods and Technical Key Points

When snow flies all across the sky and all flowers wither and fall, only the plum blossom stands proudly erect, bursting with red and displaying green. In December 1960, Chen Yi wrote "Miscellaneous Chants of a Long Night - Red Plum": "When midwinter arrives, all flowers have vanished. The red plum does not yield, every tree stands in wind and snow." The plum, together with the pine and the bamboo, shares the traits of resisting severe cold and battling ice and snow, and is honored as one of the "Three Friends of Winter." Plum blossoms in gardens, green spaces, courtyards, and scenic areas can be planted singly, in clusters, or in groups, and can also be naturally arranged in front of houses, on slopes, beside rocks, and along roadsides. If evergreen trees or dark-colored buildings are used as a background, the jade-pure and ice-clear beauty of the plum blossom can be set off even more. When seedlings such as pine, bamboo, and plum are matched together, the hoary pine is the background, the tall bamboo is the accompanying scenery, and the plum blossom is the main scenery. In ancient times, emphasis was placed on "plum blossoms surrounding the house" and "climbing a tower to view plum blossoms," all in order to obtain the best ornamental effect. In addition, plum blossoms can be arranged into plum ridges, plum peaks, plum gardens, plum paths, and plum hollows.

Training: Branch training and pruning. Plum branches easily produce water sprouts. If a mature plum tree is not pruned for a long time, many messy branches will sprout on the seedling trunk and large branches, affecting ventilation and light penetration, and affecting flowering. Pruning is mainly thinning, chiefly cutting away improperly positioned water sprouts, diseased and dead branches, and overly dense branches on the trunk. Properly shortening long flower branches can encourage more flowering branches. Because the plum canopy is relatively spreading and has no obvious central leader, it should be trained into a natural open-center form when shaping. Plum blossoms bloom first in early spring and then leaf out, so pruning and pinching back are mostly done after flowering.