A balanced approach is required to consistently grow quality cherries year after year.
Cherry trees are not very forgiving should a grower try to over crop them a couple of years in a row.
After two years of very heavy cropping, a cultivar like Lapins for instance, might decide to rest from producing a good crop and not form many fruit buds.
Having fewer fruit buds and fewer fruit bud clusters will mean that the tree will take a year off to recover, which will reduce your expected production target.
The answer: annual pruning
I think the answer lies in maintaining a regular pruning regime each year; and by not getting greedy and deciding to put off removing a limb per tree because you believe that cutting it off is like throwing fruit on the ground.
Light is a major driver to fruit bud production. No light penetration through the tree means few fruit buds forming in the lower tree.
The ideal at harvest for cost of picking is to have cherries produced within three metres from ground level, and a good percentage of the fruit able to be reached from the ground.
Plan, Act, Monitor
To keep a balanced approach, the thing to do is to plan, act and monitor.
Plan to prune each block of cherries in an orderly systematic fashion.
Remove: •upright branches with few fruit buds •regeneration •cut back long budded laterals that have potential to produce a tube of fruit or hang downwards when laden.
Act—prune one block at a time, each cultivar may need a slightly different approach.
Monitor what takes place the following season and modify your plan if required, but be sure and prune each year.
Your decision
It is easy to not spend money or do work on a block of cherries if poor weather last season adversely affected you financially. This is probably the time when work should be done.
There is an old saying that goes something like, the profit comes directly from the footprints of the farmer.
These days the profits come not from the footprints directly, but from the four wheel bike, from sitting on the spray pump looking at the trees, from the irrigation monitoring, from being observant, showing staff to be observant, and acting on and modifying the results.
Are your tees in balance? Will you prune this season, or will you put it off?
To contact Ken, and for other great articles, see the May-June 2012 issue of Tree Fruit
