Always prune far above a bud pointing outwards.

Apr 12, Sweet cherries can have flower buds on 1 year old wood as well as older wood. Often you will get good flower buds right at the base of vigorous 1 year wood. Branches that have flower buds near the tips should be headed back; essentially thinning the fruit through pruning.

Unpruned Sweet Cherry branch. Ribbons mark each year’s growth. Pruning Whips (Unbranched Trees) Unbranched cherry trees are ideal if you want more control over which branches are allowed to develop - as you might in certain artful pruning styles like espalier.

Prune whips back to to inches above the ground at planting time.

Equally as important to the benefits above, your cherry tree needs to be pruned to provide a strongly structured shape.

Jan 11, 2) it is possible that there are no pollinizer cherry trees in the area that can pollinize the sweet cherry. You can prune this tree by cutting back the suckers to their base every winter. The problem, however, is that now that the suckers have started to grow, they will continue to regrow vigorously every year.

There is no way of stopping this.