Identifying and removing suckers, or sucker growth, on fruit trees

Suckers, also referred to as water sprouts, have the ability to kill your fruit tree and starve it of all its nutrients, resulting in a weak and underperforming tree. In this video we look at how you can identify suckers, why they are important to stay on top of and then how to correctly remove sucker growth.

Firstly, why should you always remove suckers on fruit trees? Fruit tree suckers are new shoots that appear from below the graft point of your tree. Your named, cultivated variety will be on the top portion and the rootstock at the bottom. A trees natural instinct is to grow and with root stock it is no different. It is a tree after all. The root stock continues to grow as the grafted stock does and builds up energy. The root stock will push out new growth along the stem in an attempt to try save itself, diverting energy away from the grafted variety, causing it to become weak, and if left unchecked can lead to the failure of the grafted variety.

For this reason it is very important to go look around the base of all your fruit trees in the early spring and randomly throughout the growing season. Suckers grow rapidly and missing a few can have big impacts on your overall trees performance pretty quickly.

By watching this video you should be able to identify sucker growth, know what a graft is and how to remove sucker growth from your fruit tree.

Video timeline:

00:00 - Introduction & overview to sucker growth
02:08 - What is sucker growth on fruit trees?
03:41 - Why we want to prevent sucker growth
05:38 - Identifying and removing suckers from a fruit tree
08:05 - Summary of fruit tree suckers

For more updates on my journey please follow my Facebook and Instagram pages:

#fruittrees #fruittree #suckergrowth

[MySustainabilityJourney]

Do you have any questions about suckers growing on your fruit trees or the rapid foliage growth on rootstock and drastic decline in foliage and flowering on your grafted fruit tree variety?

Drop me a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts and get back to you 🌻

[didanz]

I have recently learned about rootstock suckers by observation. Your video is the only one that demonstrates this process.

[yipkusin]

Thanks for the clear and concise video. I have a bunch of trees in pots readying for transplant that all started sprouting suckers.

[natalie]

I lost my naartjie tree because I was not knowledgeable on the topic of suckers. I'm just wondering if I can still salvage it. I'm basically just letting it grow and to see what fruit will emerge if any. Thank you for great content. Can I ask which variety of basil you are growing. I love the dark purple leaves and foliage.

[hinathompson]

Excellent tutorial! Do I need to 'paint' the nuckle against pests?

[RoxyGirl]

We bought an apricot tree about 4 years ago and I had a dog that chewed and ruined it about 2 years ago. Since then it has produced multiple what I now think is those suckers from down in the roots. We didn't know any better so we left them alone and now they are thick branches. The main stem is completely dead so now what remains is the multiple branches coming from down in the roots. It did flower a bunch in the early spring but they all fell off and now it ust looks like a little bush of leaves. I just want to know if it's time to just give up on it, I feel like it should have fruited by now after so many years.

[sonnymery]

why do suckers always grow so vigorously, why do trees prefer to allocate much more energy to the suckers instead of the graft?

[tonyedwards]

Dude I've disliked the video as your video shows way to much foliage, does not incorporate fully grown fruit trees, way to much outer panning, and not enough close up all I could see was foliage.