How to Prune Mature Japanese Plum Trees

Japanese plum trees are one of the many fruit-bearing trees that provide a wonderful show of foliage with their burgundy colored leaves. They are a lovely addition to any garden as an ornamental as well as fruit trees. They can thrive in almost all planting zones and when properly cared for, can provide many fruits during harvest season. Since these plum trees grow vigorously, you need to do some maintenance work as far as thinning down the leaves and branches, which is also known as pruning.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pruning shears Hacksaw or chain saw Sealer Tape measure Pencil

1. Prune plum trees in June to prevent silver leaf diseases. Avoid pruning during the dormant stage or wintertime, especially if your Japanese plum trees are growing vigorously. Doing so will just encourage them to grow more vigorously whereby leaves and branches would be overcrowded preventing proper air circulation and enough sunlight to penetrate through, thus lessening fruit growth.

2. Cut using sharp cutting tools such as pruning shears, hacksaw or chainsaw. Avoid crushing the wood when pruning. Make sure that your tool is sterile, especially if you just pruned trees that have diseases to prevent transferring these diseases to your plum trees.

3. Seal the cut of big branches with a sealer that you can buy at any garden center. This will prevent any insects carrying diseases from burrowing in the cavities.

4. Cut the branches that are growing with bad directions to make sure that growths will be more consistent all throughout

5. Prune established Japanese plum trees, approximately three years or older, by restricting to newer growths that did not bear fruit this year. Doing this maintains the tree size within the available space.

6. Remove by pinching out strong-growing side shoots that grew this year. To do this, remove up to six leaves from their parent branch. Doing this encourages fruit-bearing next year.

7. Prune back to old wood when the central stem gets to about 8 feet high. The old wood is about 3 feet above the highest branch.

8. Prune old and decaying branches. Throw them away or burn them to discourage infecting other plants in the garden.

Tips & Warnings

• Prune Japanese plum trees during winter or dormant season only if you want to encourage more vigorous growing.
• Always use eye goggles and work gloves when using sharp tools. Sterilize your pruning tools before using to prevent spreading of infectious plant diseases.