During the cool morning hours I've been checking grafts and summer pruning young trees. Today, I came across the tree pictured at right and decided it needed to be pruned into a more balance tree shape. In general, this tree still had a well defined central leader but had one vigorous branch seemingly growing out of place. On closer investigation, I also found the top of the tree covered with stalked buds and a limb growing on the right side of the tree that had developed an over abundance of new shoots. Armed with just a pair of pruning shears, I quickly reshaped this tree.
I started by taking a closer look at that vigorous side shoot. Tracing the limb back to where in connects to the trunk. I found the diameter of the side shoot rivaled that of the central leader (photo at left). To slow the growth of this shoot, I just need to follow the "
2 foot rule" of summer pruning and limit the new growth of side shoot to 24 inches.
When pruning back a side shoot, I always prune to a downwards pointing bud (photo at right). When this bud breaks, the new growth will be directed outwards rather that upwards to compete with the central leader.
On the other side of the tree, I just needed to thin out some of the excess growth. Here, I pruned out all upwards growing shoots leaving only outward growing branches (photo at left).
Next, I moved to the top of the tree. The photo at right reveals numerous stalked buds have broken bud and have grown 6 to 8 inches in length. Left to grow, all these stalked-bud shoots would create a bushy terminal with no well defined central shoot. All this new growth at the top of the tree will make the tree top heavy and cause it to bend over from the weight (to see an example, check
this post).
Moving up the entire central leader, I used my clippers to remove every stalked-bud shoot (photo at left). When I make these cuts, I make sure that I don't injury the secondary bud just below the staked bud.
The photos above present a before and after look at my young Kanza tree. Summer pruning is a good way to keep pecan tree growing into a strong central leader tree. I have found it an invaluable tool for training young trees.
