pruning cherry tree, sweet

Question

I live in France and am not very knowledgeable about pruning fruit trees. I left it up to my husand with our first trees bought years ago and he just cut/pruned and the trees have not done well. They have grown all over the place and do not give much fruit. So two years ago I bought a small cherry tree which I am hoping to manage myself. I did read the article about how to prune or when not to prune but there are so many words that I do not understand that I am still confused. The tree is about 1.8 metres high now and looks pretty healthy, it has not yet had cherries in the two years we have had it. Could you give me some simple advice please ? and should I treat it for diseases ? last year there were a few spots of something on the leaves but not too bad.

thanks in advance,
Joanne

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Answer 1

Cherry trees are a little different to prune than most fruit trees. You will want to prune this tree during the hottest part of the year so that you do not give the tree an infection. Whe you do cut the tree, you really only want to remove a few branches. You will want to remove the entire branch back to the base. This means you will not be cutting the tree very often. During the warm season I would take of those two lower branches and leave the rest of the tree alone. After this, the tree will not need pruning often. The only other time that you want to do this is if the tree develops weak branches, or branches that point toward the center of the tree.

As for the leaf spots. I would apply wettable sulfur, and dolomitic lime to the soil. You can find these on the internet easily. This will cure what sounds like a fungal infection forming.