Cherry tree pruning.

[magicmarigold]

Hello, I bought two bare root cherry trees over winter (Stella and...another one that I can't remember without looking at the label and I've already got.my pjs on sorry)
One of them had two branches and the other had none. They have both now grown many many branches and are growing really well, however I know not to prune them over winter so when am I meant to take some of the branches off? Is it this year or next year? Do I just leave them to grow until next spring then sort out branch spacing?

Have I left it too late? I'm confused!

Thank you for any replies.

[nickdub]

You can prune them now if you want to .

First you need to decide what sort of shape you are aiming at achieving, as a fan type tree requires a different pruning approach than a bush. There's a lot of info with diagrams around on the Internet on where to prune - I think the RHS site probably has some for one.

[magicmarigold]

Thank you, I'm going for....tree shape... I will look it up tonight!

[nickdub]

You're very welcome - as it is a lot of shaping of young trees can be done by bending branches and tying them in to where you want them. My general advice would be to go steady with the secateurs to start with - bit like doing a haircut - then give it a week and see of you want to take any more off.

[ameno]

Prunus are best pruned in mid July to early August, but any time between early May and the beginning of September should be fine.
If you summer prune in the earlier side (May or June), then you will find that the branches you cut will produce more side branches before the end of summer, whereas if you leave until a bit later they usually won't.

That being said, I prune my cherry tree in about mid-April, just before flowering, and it has done fine these last 10 years.
It's a large seedling cherry, though, so the only way I can prune it is when it has no leaves, as when it is in leaf it is just too congested with leaves to see any of the branches. At that point, the flower buds can easily be distinguished from leaf buds, so I just cut the previous years growth back by about 90% (down to the flower buds, basically).

[TrialAndError]

The rule with stone fruit trees such as cherries and plums is to prune them when they are growing strongly. A range of late May to early August is fine.