One Finger Pruning of Weeping Cherries, Japanese Maples and other Grafted Plants.

Many ornamental trees and shrubs are grown using techniques known as grafting and budding.  Essentially that means that the desired variety is not grown from a cutting or a seed, but instead a piece of living tissue from a parent plant is attached to a root stock.

Sometimes root stocks are grown from seed, other times they are produced via various methods of cloning.  In the case of fruit trees such as apple trees, the root stock that is used is extremely important because many of the root stocks are dwarfing root stocks so the fruit trees don’t grow too high.  Keeping the trees shorter makes it easier to manage the trees, prune the trees and harvest the fruit.

A specific root stock is produced, then the desired apple, peach or cherry tree is budded or grafted to the root stock to create the finished trees.  More on budding and grafting here:  Grafting.   Budding.

Extremely Undesirable Suckers!

Japanese maples and Weeping Cherry trees are often ruined because of undesirable suckers.  Anytime a plant is budded or grafted there’s a really strong chance the the plant will produce undesirable suckers from the root stock.  This is not a good thing and can and will completely ruin the plant.

I made a movie about this.

Make sure you watch this little movie to the end because after I explain one finger pruning I show you living proof of how important this is, and how Ugly a Plant Can Get if You Don’t One Finger Prune!

I cannot express how important One Finger Pruning is.  If you have questions about this, please post them below and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.