Overly trimmed cherry tree in winter

[Ramprat]

Hi

 

I came across this site looking for advice, I have a medium well established cherry tree in my front garden that has been a go producer of fruit but since we moved in a few years ago we hadn't trimmed it partly due to other expensive job's being required and partly due to the fear of killing it as my neighbours lost both of theirs to disease.

 

Unfortunately it had become to overgrown and was impacting on a public path so we knew we had to get it sorted soon and being caught of guard this afternoon by a gentleman who knocked on the door to ask if we wanted it done at a reduced cost as he was doing another tree nearby I agreed.

 

Dispite asking him if it was ok to cut it in winter and him saying it was ok to do ive since read that you shouldn't cut fruit, especially cherry trees, when I'm damp or wet weather is likely, I.e winter!!

 

If just had another look at the work done and again Dispite asking for just a light trim as I know you shouldn't remove more than 10-20% it appears he's removed much more than that, possibly up to 50 or 60%!!

 

Is there anything I can do to help and protect the tree? In the past I know people used to apply limb sealers etc but I believe in recent times this has been shown to cause more harm, is that correct, I also saw elsewhere something about burning the wounds to seal and protect them and something else about using a insecticide or antifungal wash but again no real firm advice, any help or information anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated id hate to think I've killed this tree due to a stupid split second mistake and an idiot who clearly shouldn't be trimming trees.

 

I've attached a picture for reference of before and after

[Dan Maynard]

I sometimes say "I don't know who did that but I know how long his ladder was"

We wouldn't usually do anything like burning or antifungal on the cuts. The most important thing is location of the cut to make best use of the trees natural response to branch loss. Looks like there is some scope for pruning off stubs, and you might be able to improve the shape a bit.

It probably won't die, it is most likely to just sprout back with lots of vertical growth that looks unnnatural, which you then can try to prune into shape over a few years. Doing better cuts now will improve this so I would suggest getting someone who knows what they are doing to tidy it up.

Alternative is to finish it off and start again. I usually think it's best not to rush decisions with trees though, see how it goes. Worst case fell it in a few years if it's no good.

[Paddy1000111]

It seems that antifungal/arbrex isn't the cure-all people made it out to be. If you look at fruit tree pruning from a professional/biological standpoint it makes things worse. When you put a product like arbrex on a cut it stops the tree from naturally healing, fruit trees also like to split off into two smaller branches and it also stops that. What tends to happen in my experience is the arbrex peels off over the years and leaves deadwood exposed that water gets into and it rots so definitely avoid it. Sadly, if it is going to get infected then it will have already been infected by the door knockers tools as I can't imagine their biosecurity is any better than their pruning. 

 

I personally wouldn't do what some have suggested and take any more off. Branches are like a trees fat reserves and the more you take off the harder it is for the tree to recover after its dormant period so don't stress it any more. What I would do though is make proper pruning cuts as those 6"-8" stubs they have left look stupid. The photo below shows where I would make proper pruning cuts, you can just see them in red. There are plenty of guides online of how to make proper pruning cuts and where to make them. There's no excuse for stubs like that. I also marked that bottom branch. If you can, leave it until next year to give this tree a fighting chance, if not then cut it back. 

 

After that I would leave it until spring and see what it does. If it doesn't spring to life then it's time to cut it down and replant. Hopefully it springs to life and you will have a large amount of new growth called watershoots/epicormic growth which are caused by poor pruning and are a natural stress response. This is when you need to get out your secateurs. First you need to decide which ones you are going to keep, I suggest you keep anything horizontally growing and anything growing out towards the left as the tree is rather unbalanced as it is. If you haven't got anything growing horizontally or to the left you can gently tie the new growth and force it to grow in that direction, don't tie tight around the shoot but give it a soft loop to bend the new growth in that direction. Once you have your new future branches cut off any new shoots that have grown or the tree will quickly look messy. This is going to happen for a few years after now but the tree will eventually relax back into it's old growth routine. 

[Ramprat]

17 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

It seems that antifungal/arbrex isn't the cure-all people made it out to be. If you look at fruit tree pruning from a professional/biological standpoint it makes things worse. When you put a product like arbrex on a cut it stops the tree from naturally healing, fruit trees also like to split off into two smaller branches and it also stops that. What tends to happen in my experience is the arbrex peels off over the years and leaves deadwood exposed that water gets into and it rots so definitely avoid it. Sadly, if it is going to get infected then it will have already been infected by the door knockers tools as I can't imagine their biosecurity is any better than their pruning. 

 

I personally wouldn't do what some have suggested and take any more off. Branches are like a trees fat reserves and the more you take off the harder it is for the tree to recover after its dormant period so don't stress it any more. What I would do though is make proper pruning cuts as those 6"-8" stubs they have left look stupid. The photo below shows where I would make proper pruning cuts, you can just see them in red. There are plenty of guides online of how to make proper pruning cuts and where to make them. There's no excuse for stubs like that. I also marked that bottom branch. If you can, leave it until next year to give this tree a fighting chance, if not then cut it back. 

 

After that I would leave it until spring and see what it does. If it doesn't spring to life then it's time to cut it down and replant. Hopefully it springs to life and you will have a large amount of new growth called watershoots/epicormic growth which are caused by poor pruning and are a natural stress response. This is when you need to get out your secateurs. First you need to decide which ones you are going to keep, I suggest you keep anything horizontally growing and anything growing out towards the left as the tree is rather unbalanced as it is. If you haven't got anything growing horizontally or to the left you can gently tie the new growth and force it to grow in that direction, don't tie tight around the shoot but give it a soft loop to bend the new growth in that direction. Once you have your new future branches cut off any new shoots that have grown or the tree will quickly look messy. This is going to happen for a few years after now but the tree will eventually relax back into it's old growth routine. 

Thats fantastic advice, thank you for the info. I'll have a look at making the proper cuts if I'm feeling better at the weekend.

 

Yeah I can leave that lower branch the neighbour on that side is always taking the cherrys that hang over anyway so she doesn't mind.

 

I'll keep my fingers crossed come spring and see what happens, the misses came home from work earlier to discover the mess so I'm in the dog house now for this 🤣 ive been told if it dies i have to pay whatever it costs to get it removed and replaced with a mature replacement so she can have cherries again as soon as possible, guess I'll have to switch to asdas own beer for a while 😆

[Paddy1000111]

No problem! Just have a look at pruning and how to cut to a branch collar. This video on youtube sums it up pretty well- 

 

It's pretty simple stuff but making the proper pruning cut is a big deal on trees like cherry's and plums that don't usually take well to pruning. You can see on the stub they cut off what happens when you leave stubs. For the branches that are a V you need to look for the branch bark ridge and you make a cut that is 45 degrees to the ridge and is as long as the ridge itself like the photo below. You can see how the cut is pretty much the same length as the branch bark ridge. 

 

Hopefully it springs to life, if not there's a good amount of fire wood in it. You can pick up nice mature cherry trees for about £100. If you've ever seen apple/pear/cherry orchards they all have shorter, younger heavily pruned trees as they fruit better anyway!

 

If it doesn't work out or you don't want to fix it yourself then there are lots of guys on here who can help depending on where you're based! 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Paddy1000111

[peatff]

It'll recover in my experience. I tried to kill one off for years before I eventually gave up and cut it off at the base, it still put suckers up from the roots into the lawn 6 feet away.