Prune your stone fruits

If your plums and cherries need pruning, do it now until the end of July so they can heal quickly, says Bob

- Bob Flowerdew

Your Gardening Week with Bob Flowerdew, AG's organic gardening expert

QUITE correctly, most pruning is best done while our plants are ‘dormant’. Though trained fruit trees and bushes are ‘summer pruned’, this is only nipping back strong young shoots and usually not removing any older shoots or branches.

However, our prunus trees (a large group of both ornamentals and fruiters) are safest pruned only between now and late July. This is because of the prevalence of silver leaf disease. As its name suggests, the leaves can become quite silvered as they reflect the light differently once infected. The trees slowly waste away, eventually dying and erupting fungal bodies, spreading their spores (they should, by law, be cut up and burnt before then).