Yesterday hubby and I put on snow shoes and headed out into the main part of the yard to try and get to our plum tree’s. They were in a way the fruit tree’s that need the least amount of pruning on the farm as they took a huge pruning/cut back job on them last year due to treating a disease on them.

It was a brutal pruning job done at the wrong time of the year but we cut out all the effected limbs and removed all the fruit and treated the tree’s. We will need to treat them again this spring and clean up all under them.

So really this spring we headed out with two goals in mind in regards to pruning the plums.

1. To remove suckers, cross over rubbing branches out of the trees, any branches that were growing downward instead of upwards and to open up the middle of the tree’s to encourage a nice open middle of the trees.
2. Trim down all but the single or double main shoots into whips as the younger 2 to 3 year old plums are going to be dug up and moved around the yard this year in the great replant.

Here is what we were mainly dealing with in general.

This is a plum in need of spring pruning, that snow is a good 18 to 22 inches high, so there is a good base down there yet.

Here is the same tree with its approx. 1/4th to 1/3rd taken off.. Because we took so much last year, we went pretty easy on the plums this year.

I was checking the plums pretty closely to see where they are at, as they are the very first hard fruit bloomers in the spring and where they are at helps me figure out when to start warming up and releasing my mason bee coons into the permaculture based food hedgerow plants.

I will take photos of them later in the season and link it back though for you!