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#pruning advice please! I thought this little #CherryTree was dead; is it too late to do a winter pruning? Our cold weather was about two week of frosty nights, last month. The buds are showing green, just.
Also, all the buds are at the very ends of the branches - *can* i prune them without starving it? Prune a fraction, maybe?
I’m trying to follow _Grow A Little Fruit Tree_, am at the 3rd year.
@clew Does it NEED pruning? Could you show a picture of the whole tree? It might just be wiser to leave it alone for the season to see how it grows. Can't be more specific without seeing the whole tree in context and what growing zone it's in. 
@clew Glad your tree lives! @richrollgardener raises some good ?’s. Most likely, there is no rush and you could wait a year w/o problem. Also, those round buds at the shoot tip look to be flowering buds. They are developmentally ahead of vegetative buds (normal for cherry), which are smaller and further down on that stem. If you removed all the shoot tips, the tree would still generate plenty of leaves from the vegetative buds. Of course, I wouldn’t suggest any cuts w/o more info on this tree.
Flowering vs vegetative bud timing is exactly what I needed! Thanks
@clew I would NOT prune a tree if it is not well established. And concerning the ultimate size of the tree, that is going to be determined by the root stock. If you purchased a tree as a 'dwarf' (that is, on dwarf root stock), it will not turn into a giant tree in three years, five years, ten years, or ever. If you have saved the plastic label that is usually banded on the tree when you purchase it, the label should have information about the ultimate size of the tree.
In any case, given your doubts about how well the tree is doing, I would leave the tree alone this year and see what growth you get.
So the ‘Grow a Little Fruit Tree’ the OP mentions (by Ann Ralph) points out that root stock typically has a max of 20% restriction in height meaning a standard apple if left could still grow to 28 feet - way too big for many gardens.
Pruning now is fine but it will have a bigger impact on growth than pruning in December. So light prune maybe?
I want it to be * small* not big — that’s the whole point of that book!
Dagnabbit, Pascaline! @michaelmeckler
I absolutely agree with you both no pruning this year, just give it some time to develop, and decide what to do next year. Coming back like this costs a lot of energy. I have a fig tree that I thought was dead after it was abused by the first (and deeply stupid, and fake) gardener. I kept it as it was because it was still decorative. And seven years later, it suddenly sprouted tiny leaves.
