Last year we focused on pruning our newly planted pecan trees. Don’t underestimate the importance of pruning young pecan trees in order to train their growth. I have some pictures of trees that we pruned last year and how they look this year. If we do it right, the trees appear butchered. This of course is why I wanted UGA Pecan Specialist Dr. Lenny Wells to do this so nobody would chase me out of the county. When Dr. Wells finished, the first thought was, “Am I ever going to have pecans?”
But now, the trees are growing and structurally more sound. This is even more important with storms or heavy winds as we saw last year.
It’s important to understand that when we DON’T prune at all, we can actually lose a year on production. Many of these branches on these trees will not be productive branches in the future.
This is pretty much the last year where we will prune this hard. At this stage, we want to do 3 things:
- Cut off ALL branches up to head high.
- Select a central leader.
- Tip the terminal just UNDER the ‘cluster’ of buds at top. You will see the buds clustered at the very top. Come right underneath this, where the distance between the buds start to expand, and make a cut.
