Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
earlier for open center peaches (see page 459 ), but you may want to leave
a few more secondary branches.
With Japanese plums, pay particular attention to thinning out water
sprouts and unwanted lateral branches. Japanese varieties tend to produce
too much fruit, leading to small size fruit and more disease problems. For
these reasons, you must prune Japanese plums more heavily than you would
European varieties. Use thinning cuts to open up the canopy. Use stub cut-
tings (described for sweet cherry, page 447 ) to renew fruiting branches
that are more than about 5 years old. By renewing fruiting branches, you can
help reduce shading and maintain large fruits without using excessive hand
thinning. You can also renew branches of European plums by removing older
branches heavily set with fruiting spurs.
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