Pruning an Everfresh Tree: Keeping a Fast Grower in Shape

Why this tree has to be cut

Left alone, an everfresh puts nearly all its energy into extending a few leading shoots. Within a single warm season those shoots can add a foot or more (30 cm or more), and the plant ends up tall, thin and bare at the bottom with a tuft of leaves at the top. It looks nothing like the compact, many-branched specimen it was when you bought it, and no amount of feeding or watering fixes that shape.

Pruning is the fix, and this species takes it well. Cut a stem and it responds by pushing two or more new shoots from buds below the cut. Every cut you make is therefore a branch you are creating. Treat cutting back as routine maintenance for a vigorous tree rather than as emergency surgery.

When to cut and how much

Prune during the period of active growth, when the days are long and the room is warm. A plant cut then regrows within weeks. A plant cut in the coldest, darkest weeks sits with bare stubs for months, and the cut ends are more likely to die back before they resprout.

You can take a third of the plant's height off in one go on a healthy specimen and it will recover fully. A very leggy plant can be cut back harder still, down to a framework of bare stems, provided each stem you leave is at least six inches (15 cm) long and the plant is warm and in strong light while it recovers.

Making the cuts

The technique matters less than the timing, but a few habits make a visible difference to the shape you end up with a season later.

1. Decide the outline before you cut anything Stand back and picture the silhouette you want. Then cut to that outline rather than trimming a little here and there. Piecemeal snipping over months produces an awkward shape, because each small cut sends growth in a new direction.
2. Cut just above a node Find the point where a leaf joins the stem, and cut about a quarter inch (5 mm) above it. The buds at that node are what produce the new shoots. Leaving a long bare stub above a node achieves nothing and the stub usually dies back and looks untidy.
3. Cut to a bud facing the direction you want New shoots grow in the direction the bud points. Cutting to an outward-facing node opens the plant up. Cutting to an inward-facing node crowds the center, which then shades itself and drops leaflets.
4. Use clean, sharp pruners Sharp blades cut cleanly and the wound seals fast. Blunt blades crush the stem and the tissue behind the cut dies back. Wipe the blades before and after, particularly if you are moving between plants.
5. Thin the crossing branches Remove any shoot that rubs against another or grows straight back through the middle of the tree. Air and light reaching the interior is what keeps the inner leaves from dropping and makes pest problems easier to spot.

Save the healthy trimmings. Shoots four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) long with several nodes are exactly what you want for taking cuttings, so a pruning session and a propagation session are naturally the same afternoon.

After the cut

A freshly pruned plant has far fewer leaves and therefore uses far less water. This is the point at which people kill an otherwise healthy tree, by carrying on with the old watering routine while the plant is not drinking. Let the mix dry further between waterings until the new shoots are out, then return to normal.

Hold off on fertilizer until you can see the new growth extending, usually two to three weeks. Feeding a plant that has no leaves to use the nutrients only builds up salts in the mix. Once the shoots are moving, feed at normal strength through the rest of the growing season to fuel the regrowth.

Record the date of every cut, how much you took and how long the first new shoots took to appear. Two years of that record tells you precisely how early in the season you can prune in your own home, which is the one thing general advice cannot give you.