Suckers-- keep em or leave em?

Hello everyone--

My small fruit tree orchard was ravaged by locusts this July. They defoliated most of the trees and some berry bushes and on some they stripped the bark off the newer growth near the top.  Thankfully they're all still alive. They have all regrown varying degrees of foliage over the last month. However, many are also sending up suckers from their base, some from short distances along the roots as well.

The common wisdom I was taught was that it's best to remove these. Some say right away-- while that may be true under ideal conditions I am inclined to not touch them until the dead of winter to avoid causing any further stress to these trees this season. Part of me wants to let the trees do their thing and keep pruning limited to dead branches. I am not sure if this should apply to suckers however. I also wonder if under an environment subject to the occasional ravaging by locusts and tree borers, additional growth of any kind may increase the odds of long-term survival. I realize letting the suckers go would create more of a bush than a tree but would it harm the tree health and would the suckers ultimately bear fruit?

Important to note that for most of my trees the root stock and the above ground growth share genetics. Most of these have been started from seed. They include apple, goumi, apricot, peach, sour cherry, quince and jujube.

Thanks for any insights,
Blaise

If the suckers are young, I tend to remove them promptly.

My thought is the tree can spend energy continuously to the suckers instead of the areas I want to recover (Branches, Leaves).

If the tree is really beat, and the suckers have been there for some time. I might wait till 'appropriate' trimming time in the fall/winter.

If the tree got stressed, I wait until the tree is dormant to remove the suckers that way it can gather as much nutrients from the leaves to start again in the fall.

If the tree got really really stressed, I'll graph some more of the desired fruit onto the suckers.  That way we have backup.  The tree already showed a disinclination to thrive in my conditions, so more graphs wouldn't hurt.  Then I remove any that don't have the shape I want.  

Other than that, I remove them when I see them.  Here, it's standard to prune year 'round except if there is a chance of frost or freeze in the next two days.  But different locations have different traditions for keeping fruit trees.  

I have clipped the jujube from the main root and when dormant transplant and graft a known cultivar on it.  I had good success with Li and Sherwood.  I am doing that again this year.  Get scion wood from Cliff England at Englands Nursery.

Blaise Waniewski wrote:Important to note that for most of my trees the root stock and the above ground growth share genetics. Most of these have been started from seed. They include apple, goumi, apricot, peach, sour cherry, quince and jujube.

If they're seedlings then there's no need to worry about it. Prune them off if you want a single-stemmed tree form, but perhaps wait until after they have gone dormant so they are able to pump as much sunlight as they can for the rest of the season.

With grafted trees, you would want to remove the suckers, as they can be far more vigorous than whatever is grafted on top, and can starve and eventually kill any grafted portion above.

If you have winter predation from voles, rabbits, etc., single stem trees are easier to protect, but there's no reason you can't put a wire cage around the whole thing, or multiple tree tubes on all the suckers, etc.

If I have a sucker jump up along the roots I move the unanticipated plant elsewhere. I put it in another place and let it go, scion wood or root stock for something later.

I have tried doing what Ray described,  with no success.

I wonder if air layering could be good in this context.
You could get new trees, plus redirect the vigor back to the main trunk.