What is the best month to prune pomegranate trees?

Pomegranate tree pruning time

The time for pruning pomegranate trees is generally in late autumn and spring. The purpose of late autumn pruning is to make a rough pruning before the pomegranate tree goes dormant. Pruning is generally done after the fruit is picked and harvested. The purpose of spring pruning is to adjust the ratio between fruit branches and nutrient branches.

Generally, pruning is done between budding and flowering. If there are too many fruits on each branch, the number of fruit leaves will be too few, resulting in poor fruit development.

How to prune a pomegranate tree

1. Pruning young trees

After planting, the trunk of the pomegranate sapling needs to be determined. During the pruning period in the winter of the first year, leave several branches in different directions and evenly distributed from the new branches sprouting from below the cut, cultivate them as the main branches, and then shorten them, remove the remaining branches, and determine the tree shape.

2. Pruning during the peak fruiting period

During the peak fruit-bearing period, the crown of the pomegranate tree should be maintained, and then the unnecessary branches, dead branches and diseased branches should be removed. Then the balance between the overall growth and fruit of the pomegranate tree should be adjusted. In winter, some of the vigorously growing branches should be thinned out and removed, leaving more mother branches.

Pomegranate tree pruning precautions

When the pomegranate tree warms up in spring, the overgrown branches during the winter should be cut off to retain healthy and strong branches. Young seedlings should be topped several times to promote rapid growth of the tree. When pruning, special attention should be paid to leaving the outside and not the inside, leaving straight lines and not horizontal lines, and the cut should be left on the outside.