The Complete Guide to Pruning Stone Fruit Trees in Melbourne & the Mornington Peninsula

Written by Adrian Bufton, May 21 2026

Nothing says Australian summer quite like a backyard harvest of fresh apricots, cherries, plums, and peaches. While stone fruit trees provide spectacular spring blossoms and delicious summer rewards, they are also some of the most sensitive trees you can grow in Victoria.

Because they are deciduous, many well-meaning gardeners treat them exactly like apples or figs, reaching for the secateurs the moment the leaves drop in the dead of winter. However, with stone fruits, this common mistake can actually be fatal to the tree.

We constantly see it: homeowners struggling with the same issue. A beautiful, established cherry or apricot tree suddenly goes into severe decline after a heavy July prune, ravaged by fungal diseases brought on by Melbourne’s freezing, wet winter weather!

As a professional arborist and co-owner of Bay Tree Services, Adrian Bufton has spent years managing and tree pruning delicate stone fruit varieties across the South East and the Mornington Peninsula. In this article, Adrian clears up the confusion around the unique rules for pruning stone fruits.

The short answer? Put the secateurs away in winter. For stone fruits, late summer and early autumn pruning is the key to preventing disease and ensuring a bountiful harvest.

This complete pruning guide covers everything you need to know about caring for stone fruit trees in Victoria. We’ll walk you through the structural shapes that prevent rot, the exact timing to avoid infection, and how to keep your fruit within easy netting reach.

When is the Best Time to Prune Stone Fruit Trees in Victoria?

This is the most crucial distinction for Melbourne gardeners: unlike apples or figs, many stone fruits should NOT be pruned in winter.

Melbourne’s cold, damp winters create the perfect breeding ground for airborne pathogens, particularly Bacterial Canker and Silver Leaf disease. When you prune a stone fruit tree in July or August, the tree is dormant, and the sap is not flowing. This means it cannot quickly seal over the open wounds you just made, allowing those diseases direct entry into the wood.

The best time to prune stone fruits—especially apricots and cherries—is in late summer or early autumn (post-harvest). Pruning while the weather is still warm and dry allows the tree’s natural defence systems to act quickly, sealing up the cuts before the winter rains arrive.

How to Prune Apricot, Cherry, and Plum Trees

Stone fruits require a delicate touch. Your pruning goals should focus heavily on disease prevention and managing the tree’s height so you can actually protect the fruit from birds. Here are the professional techniques our arborists use:

1. Shaping the “Open Vase”

Stone fruits thrive when trained into a classic “open vase” or bowl shape. By completely clearing out the congested centre of the tree, you allow maximum sunlight to reach the ripening fruit. More importantly, an open centre ensures excellent airflow. Getting the Mornington Peninsula coastal breeze through the canopy dries out the leaves quickly after rain, drastically reducing the risk of brown rot ruining your peaches and plums.

2. Pruning for Fruit Spurs

Many stone fruits, particularly cherries and plums, produce their fruit on “spurs”—stubby, knobby little branches that look somewhat like dead wood. A common mistake is cutting off all these knobby spurs while trying to make the tree’s branches look neat. If you cut off the spurs, you cut off your future fruit! Always identify where your specific tree sets its fruit before thinning the branches.

3. Managing Vigorous Summer Growth

Once the tree has finished fruiting in January or February, it is time for height control. Stone fruits can shoot up rapidly. If you leave vertical “water shoots” unchecked, the tree will grow far too tall to safely throw a bird net over. Use this late-summer window to cut back the height, ensuring next year’s harvest stays within easy picking reach.

The South East Melbourne Seasonal Stone Fruit Pruning Calendar

Professional Stone Fruit Pruning & Care

Pruning delicate stone fruits can be nerve-wracking, especially when one wrong cut at the wrong time of year can invite devastating diseases. If you want to ensure your apricot, cherry, plum, or peach trees are pruned safely and correctly, the team at Bay Tree Services is here to help.

Our qualified arborists provide expert, disease-conscious fruit tree pruning, shaping, and tree care across South East Melbourne, the Bayside suburbs, and the Mornington Peninsula.

Contact us today for a free quote!

Got other fruit trees in your yard? Don’t worry, we have you covered with The Complete Guide to Pruning Fig Trees & The Complete Guide to Pruning Citrus Trees

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. When and how do I prune plums to avoid Silver Leaf disease?

Silver Leaf is a devastating fungal disease that enters through fresh pruning wounds during wet, cool weather. To avoid it, you must wait for a stretch of warm, dry weather in late summer or early autumn. Always sterilise your secateurs with rubbing alcohol before you start. Make clean cuts at the branch collar, and for any major structural cuts, apply a sterile pruning paint immediately.

2. What happens if I pruned my cherry or apricot tree in winter by mistake?

First, do not panic. Many gardeners make this mistake before learning about bacterial canker and Silver Leaf. Watch for signs of dieback on the branches you cut or jelly-like sap oozing from the wounds as spring arrives. If the weather is still dry, you can seal the larger winter cuts with pruning paint to offer some late protection. Make a note to shift your pruning to March or April next year.

3. How much can I safely prune back an overgrown peach tree?

Even if your peach tree is a towering, tangled mess, stick strictly to the 30% rule: never remove more than one-third of the tree’s living canopy in a single year. If you chop the whole tree down to a stump in one weekend, you will send it into severe shock. Plan a “rejuvenation prune” over three consecutive autumns instead.

4. Should I remove crossing branches first?

Your absolute first priority is always the “Three D’s” (Dead, Damaged, and Diseased wood). Once the unhealthy wood is gone, crossing and rubbing branches become your next target. When branches rub together in the Melbourne wind, they strip away each other’s bark, creating an open wound that invites infection.

5. Why is my apricot tree weeping a jelly-like sap from the trunk?

This is a condition known as “gummosis,” often a symptom of Bacterial Canker. The tree oozes this amber, jelly-like sap to push out an infection. It is highly common in Victoria when stone fruits are pruned in winter or damaged by frost. Carefully prune out the infected branches well below the oozing canker during dry weather, sterilising your tools between every cut.

6. How do I prune dwarf nectarine and peach trees in pots?

Dwarf stone fruits in courtyard pots require the exact same “open vase” structure as large backyard trees. Because they are in a confined space, good airflow is even more critical to prevent fungal rot. Focus late-summer pruning on keeping the centre completely hollowed out and trimming outward-facing branches back to a healthy bud.

7. Do I really need to seal pruning cuts on stone fruit trees?

For most hardy fruit trees, sealing cuts is no longer recommended. However, apricots and cherries grown in damp coastal areas like the Mornington Peninsula are the exception. Applying a fungicidal pruning paste to large cuts (anything larger than a 50-cent piece) provides an essential physical barrier while the wood calluses over.

8. What is the difference between thinning fruit and pruning branches?

Pruning involves cutting away the wood in late summer or autumn. Thinning is done in mid-spring and involves gently plucking off some of the hard, green baby fruits by hand. If a plum tree sets too much fruit, the sheer weight can snap the branches. Thinning ensures the tree has the energy to grow the remaining fruit to a large, sweet size.

9. Why did my peach tree produce fruit last year but nothing this year?

Peaches and nectarines only produce fruit on one-year-old wood (the fresh branches that grew during the previous summer). If you aggressively pruned your tree and cut off all of last year’s reddish-green growth, you essentially cut off your entire harvest! You must learn to identify the new fruiting wood and leave enough behind.

10. Can I put diseased stone fruit branches in my council green bin?

If you have pruned out branches infected with Silver Leaf or brown rot, do not put them in your home compost bin, as it rarely gets hot enough to kill the pathogens. In areas like Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula Shire, you can usually place them in your council-collected green waste bin, as commercial facilities reach temperatures high enough to destroy the spores.

11. How do I stop my cherry tree from growing too tall to net?

Cherries are notorious for shooting straight up. The trick is to perform aggressive “summer pruning” right after you harvest the fruit in December or January. By cutting the tall, vertical leaders back to an outward-facing bud while the tree is still actively growing, you control the height and redirect the energy into wider lateral branches.

12. Do nectarines need to be pruned differently than peaches?

No, nectarines and peaches are cared for identically. A nectarine is simply a peach without the fuzz (a natural genetic mutation). Both trees bear fruit on one-year-old wood, both require an open vase shape for maximum sun exposure, and both should be pruned in late summer or early autumn to prevent disease.