We distinguish between winter cutting and summer cutting. In Poland, only winter cutting is commonly performed. In small orchards, you can start cutting in the early spring, in February or March and finish in April. This is the most suitable period for apple pruning, pear and plum trees. In large orchards, where pruning takes several weeks, it must be started in January and continued until May, until the trees bloom. If it is necessary to start cutting already in January, then frost-resistant apple trees should be cut first, for example the Mclntosh variety and all the others in this group like Melba, Lobo, Cortland i Spartan. Then apple varieties more sensitive to frost, and finally pear trees, plums and cherries. It follows from many years of observation and experience, that pruning frost-sensitive varieties at the beginning of winter may freeze the area around the wounds, or even whole trees, if the temperature drops below -25 ° C.
All trees can be pruned without damage in May, before or during flowering. Due to the organization of work, it is advisable to complete the cut by mid-April, because later comes more urgent work, such as spraying and soil care, and scattered branches make it difficult for the sprayers to pass.
Summer cutting is performed from June to September. In old orchard manuals you can find descriptions of the classic summer pruning, the most famous of which was the cut developed by the French gardener Luis Lorette. It consisted in removing the tops of shoots several times over the summer in order to inhibit their growth and turning them into fruiting shoots. Such a cut was indispensable in French palace gardens, when led in the form of artificial dwarf apple and pear trees. Tree growth was limited by removing the shoots.
When at the beginning of the 20th century. the cultivation of dwarf apple and pear trees was introduced in commercial orchards, it was considered, that they should be cut in a similar way as in the palace gardens. Hence, in books from the interwar period, we find separate descriptions of pruning vigorously growing trees, which were carried out in a more or less natural form and separate descriptions of the pruning of dwarf trees. Later experiences showed, that although dwarf trees can handle pruning better than vigorous trees, they do not require any special pruning for good fruiting. On the contrary, even, they can be cut very poorly, because they have few shoots.
Currently, the classic summer cutting according to the Luis Lorette principle is used only in some home gardens in Western Europe.. In commercial courts, on the other hand, more and more simplified methods of summer pruning are becoming popular.
Summer cutting inhibits tree growth more than winter cutting. It bounces fewer shoots after summer pruning than after winter pruning. Hence, summer pruning is used in densely planted intensive orchards if there is a need to limit the size of trees. For this purpose, the tips of intensively growing shoots are shortened once in July, or else strong shoots are cut at the base.
In intensive orchards, summer pruning is more and more common in order to obtain a beautiful blush on the fruit. Wolves grown on the limbs and strong growths in the upper part of the crown are cut out. For a good result cut the wolves out 4 weeks before the expected fruit harvest. Cutting wolves in summer gives big savings in working time when cutting later in winter.
Until the fruit is harvested from the trees, summer pruning is usually limited to this year's shoots only, on which there is no fruit. After picking the fruit, you can cut the trees in the same way as during the winter dormancy. In the summer, after picking the fruit, you should cut cherries and cherries, because they are at this time the least vulnerable to infestation by bark and wood diseases.
Summer pruning is also used in fruit shrub plantations. In raspberries, all last year's shoots should be cut immediately after picking the fruit. In the cultivation of red currants and gooseberries in a row form, the walls of the line are trimmed with hedge shears on 2-3 weeks before harvesting the fruit. Black currant bushes, red and gooseberries can be x-rayed in August after picking the fruit.