The Right Time To Prune A Cherry Tree For The Sweetest Harvest

If your sweet cherry tree (Prunus avium) is producing fruit that's small or not as sweet as you expected, you might not be pruning it at the right time. Although sweet cherry are fruit trees that even a beginning gardener can grow in their yards, well-timed cuts allow more light and air into the canopy, helping the tree focus its energy on growing higher-quality fruit. The right time to prune a sweet cherry tree for sweeter fruit depends on the age of the tree. While there are other cherry tree varieties to plant and grow for juicy fruit, sweet cherries need to be pruned in summer for best fruiting.

Cherry trees produce their best fruit on new growth (called fruiting spurs), so keeping young, healthy branches in the canopy is crucial if you want a good harvest. Thoughtful pruning helps encourage the right kind of new growth while preserving productive branches, and, done correctly, this also opens up the tree to reduce fruit diseases like brown rot and improve airflow — two essentials for healthy, fruit-laden branches. Specifically, prune sweet cherry trees in early July through August, but only when you're sure there won't be any rainfall in the coming month or more. Summer pruning helps the tree heal cut wounds quickly, limits overly vigorous growth, and encourages fruit spur development.

Start pruning after harvest, when the cherry tree is less vulnerable to moisture-related diseases. Begin by cutting away dead, damaged, or diseased limbs, and then thin out any crowded areas in the canopy. This allows more sunlight to reach the fruiting wood, improving airflow and reducing the risk of fungal problems, while also helping the fruit develop better color and sweetness.

Sweet cherries aren't among the fast-growing fruit trees you'll want to plant in your yard for quick yield. In the first three years, focus on shaping the tree into an open, vase-like form with three to four sturdy scaffold branches spaced evenly around the trunk. This shape keeps fruit close to the ground, prevents overcrowding, and encourages strong wood that can handle a heavy cherry crop. Pruning young trees this way also builds a structure that won't need much correction later on.

Sweet cherries tend to fruit best at the base of the previous year's shoots and on young spurs, so it's important to keep those areas active. Older spurs lose productivity over time, so thinning them out allows new fruiting wood to develop. Avoid heading cuts, where you cut only the tip or a little more from a branch. They can cause a surge of weak, upright growth that uses the energy the tree would otherwise assign to fruiting. Consistent pruning, especially in the early years, lays the foundation for a tree that produces abundant, delicious cherries season after season.