Spring is right around corner and its time to start pruning fruit trees, so Castle Country Radio took time to sit down with Agriculture Assistant Professor, Steve Price to talk about the importance of pruning trees and rose bushes.

“So really for most of us we’re going to be pruning fruit trees for about the next month – three weeks to a month, that’s going to be the prime time to do it. Really what you’re going to do in late February, is mid to late February, you’re going to be pruning the more dormant types of fruit trees, these are things like apples and pears. Towards the beginning of March, first couple weeks of March that’s when you’re going to want to prune back the less dormant type of fruit trees, so that’s things like peaches and your cherries are also in that kind of category,” stated Price. Ornamental trees are best pruned in the summer. If you see anything dead or diseased cut it out immediately don’t wait for a special pruning time to do that.

It’s important to prune trees during this time of year to help it produces better crops. ‘You know as we approach Spring and that tree starts actively metabolizing and as you said the sap flow starts increasing and those buds start swelling to break dormancy to produce more leaves. What you are trying to do is prune before that happens, right before that happens. So what a lot of folks don’t understand is pruning, its kind of counterintuitive, but pruning actually spurs new growth,” said Price. Pruning too early could result in the tree buds getting hit by frost so pruning before the tree breaks dormancy is important to help protect those buds.

“Rose bushes, in particular, are something that we’ll be pruning, well, within the next month and what you kind of want is, again, you want to see that those buds are starting to grow, you’re getting active growth. If you prune too early, you can rob the plant of its food stores for the winter and you also can cause that from frost damage by breaking the plants dormancy. So right before bud break on roses is the time to prune,” said Price. Its good to wait to see some growth so that what you know where you will need to prune off.

The USU Extension Office will be hosting a pruning class in Green River for anyone that is interested. “We’ll be in Green River March 6 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. We’ll actually be on a farm, on a farm that actually has fruit trees. So this is an awesome opportunity for some hands-on education. To get registered just either your Emery or Carbon County Extension Office and we will sign you up,” explained Price. The phone number to the Carbon County Extension office is (435) 636-3233 or Emery County Extension Office (435) 381-2381.