Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
▪ Keep the plants short enough to comfortably harvest, either by hand
or with over-the-row harvesters. For fruit production, the bushes
are kept 10 feet tall or shorter.
▪ Maintain open shapes and plantings that allow good light penetra-
tion and air movement.
For ornamental landscape plantings, modify these steps to meet your needs.
In general, you will prune to remove dead and damaged stems and to thin
out the stems to create an attractive specimen shrub. The mature heights of
tion the bushes are kept about 7 to 10 feet tall, depending on whether they
will be hand or mechanically harvested. Strive for an open, spreading, vase-
shaped shrub with a spread that is about equal to its height. Occasionally
remove old stems to maintain a healthy and vigorous shrub.
Training Sweet Cherry Trees
Until recently, sweet cherries were most often trained to vase shapes and
allowed to develop into tall trees, with most fruit produced far above the
ground. Improved training systems and dwarfing rootstocks now allow us to
grow smaller trees with 80 percent or more of the fruit harvested without
ladders. The smaller trees and more open designs allow for improved pest
and disease management.
Sweet cherries bear their fruits at the base of 1-year-old wood and on
short spurs located on 2-year-old and older wood. Unlike the short-lived
spurs on tart cherries, the fruiting spurs on sweet cherries live for 10 to 12
years, but the best-quality fruit comes from young to middle-aged spurs.
The type and amount of pruning needed for sweet cherry trees depend
on the rootstock and the training system. With trees that grow on vigorous
