Pruning is one of the key elements that keeps a landscape healthy and attractive. Although trimming plants can be a physically taxing task, the effectiveness of this vital skill also largely depends on mental preparation and planning.
The following details are intended to assist you in making plans and getting ready for the upkeep and care of your trees and shrubs so they can give you years of beauty and functionality. You may increase ventilation, shape your plants, and promote new development by pruning out undesired growth. But the key to an effective trimming process is timing.
Let’s start with some basics:
What is Pruning?
Trimming or chopping off your plant’s extra branches or foliage is known as pruning. Plants can be pruned in three different ways: pinching, heading, and thinning.
Pinching: By physically removing the primary stem from your plant—that is, pinching it with your fingers—you can encourage the growth of additional stems, which will help your plant stay compact while becoming fuller.
Heading: Cutting off sections of a plant’s branches is known as heading, and it helps regulate the size of the plant, encourage the growth of side stems, and influence the growth of your trees or shrubs.
Thinning: By lowering the density of your foliage, increasing the amount of sunshine that reaches your garden, and minimizing the places where pests might hide, thinning keeps your garden from being overcrowded.
Items You’ll Require
- Tools and Equipment
- gloves for gardening
- Wearing protective apparel
- Pruners by hand
- Loppers
- Shears Saw
Materials
- Overgrown, mature plant
Why Do Plants Need to Be Pruned?
Knowing why and what you want to accomplish with pruning is just as critical as knowing when or how to do it. Pruning has numerous benefits, such as—but not restricted to—
- Keep plants healthy
- Remove any infected, damaged, dead, or dying wood immediately.
- Take out any branches that are rubbing or crossing.
- Optimize optimal airflow inside the plant’s structure.
- Take out any undesirable shoots.
- Regulate the size
- Draw attention to a decorative element (flowers, fruit, etc.)
- Retain the intended form.
When Should You Prune?
The results of pruning plants at the incorrect time might be very unfavorable. The type of plant, the intended result, and the degree of pruning required will determine when is the best time to prune. Pruning can be done any time of year to get rid of unhealthy, dead, or diseased branches.
April–March
- Pruning plants that flower on previous season’s wood, such lilacs, rhododendrons, and ornamental fruit trees, should be done right away to enhance flowering the next year.
- The basic time range for pruning is shown in the chart below. Please contact one of our sales representatives for more details. We can always be of assistance!
- Prune plants such as butterfly bush, crape myrtle, roses, spirea, privet, and some hydrangea before bud break in spring.
February–April:
- Summer Flowering Shrubs
- Fig trees among other fruits
- Evergreens: holly, boxwood, juniper, arborvitae, and yews.
May–June
Pieris (Andromeda), azalea, forsythia, rhododendron, Lilac, Spiraea (bridal wreath & vanhouttei), dogwoods, flowering cherry & plum trees, and some hydrangea are examples of spring-flowering shrubs that should be clipped immediately after they flower.
June and July
When young branches are fully grown and start to turn woody, prune them. Most deciduous (shade) trees, including birch, linden, crab apple, maples, oaks, flowering cherry, plum, spruces, honey locust, and willows, should be thinned at this time of year.
Hedges should be pruned as needed to keep their neat lines.
August through December
Excessive pruning now may encourage new growth that may not have enough time to mature and become vulnerable to damage from early and winter frosts.
It’s preferable to restrict trimming during this time of year to get rid of dead or damaged branches.
When your plants are dormant, which usually happens in the winter or early spring before new growth appears, is the best time to prune. This enables them to recuperate and concentrate their efforts on fresh growth. However, the type of plant and the climate where you live will determine the precise pruning schedule.
Best Time to Pruning Common Plants
- Roses: Prune in late winter or early spring before new growth begins. Remove dead, diseased, or crossing branches. Shorten remaining branches by about one-third.
- Evergreens: Prune during the summer or fall when the weather is cool and dry. Focus on removing dead, diseased, or damaged branches. You can also shape the plant by trimming branches.
- Flowering Shrubs: Prune in late winter or early spring before new growth starts. Remove dead, diseased, or crossing branches. Shorten remaining branches by about one-third.
- Trees: Prune in winter or early spring before sap flow commences. Remove dead, diseased, or damaged branches. Shape the tree by trimming branches as needed.
Tree Pruning
Similar to outside trees, indoor trees may require periodic pruning to support continued growth and form. Similarly, it’s a good idea to shape and prune them if they’re growing too big for your area. Tree pruning is also an excellent strategy to somewhat thin out your trees. This not only enhances their aesthetic appeal but also promotes better airflow between the leaves and branches, which benefits the plant as a whole.
Ficus and Dracaenas are two types of indoor trees that typically grow vertically, but you can encourage branching by pruning off the tip of the tree.
By doing this, you will compel your plant to stop growing straight up and instead branch out from the edges of the incision. Expanding on this concept, you can direct the growth of your plant, so you may customize the size of your tree to fit your interior.
Vine pruning
Similar to trees, vines can benefit from routine pruning to prevent over-strength and promote a fuller appearance. Regular pruning is especially beneficial for certain varieties of philodendron and pothos vines. In addition to removing withered or yellow leaves, most vines can have their appearance made bushier and fuller by pruning. This can be achieved by trimming your plant just below a leaf or by pinching off new growth with your fingers every now and again.
This will encourage your plant to generate new vining stems from an existing one, keeping it looking full and compact rather than sparsely trailing down a planter.
Shrubs and Trees Blooming in the Summer
Summer-blooming plants, including crape myrtle and potentilla, generate their flowers on new growth from the previous season. When they are dormant in the winter or in the early spring, right before they start to sprout new growth, they should be pruned. Even if you completely chop them down in the late winter, they will still blossom in the summer.
To cut stems from the base of the plant, use a pole pruner with a revolving head to save time. In this manner, you may avoid bending over for every cut, which will save you time and prevent your back from getting tired.
Shrubs Lacking of Vibrant Blooms
Removing leaves from deciduous plants can be best done almost anytime except in late fall. After late-season trimming, the regrowth will be too fragile to last the winter. When the shrub is dormant in the winter, it’s ideal to make significant pruning cuts.
How to Prune Perennials
Pruning perennials that don’t include wood is very simple. A well-groomed perennial bed can be achieved by consistent pruning and deadheading (pinching off spent flowers) throughout the growth season.
Reduce the amount of dead growth
Use shears to clip back any dead growth to the ground in the fall or early spring.
Get Your Plant Started in Training
Train the plant as it grows by trimming off or excavating any straggling sections. Once you’ve dug up perennials, you can give them to other gardeners or replant them.
Pinch Blossoms Beneath the Bloom
To preserve look, routinely pinch or clip off spent flowers immediately below the bloom during the growing season.
Regularly Trim Growth
Use shears to trim robust, non-blooming growth all season long.
Cutting Evergreens
It’s probably a good idea for gardeners to leave their evergreen trees alone, as many do. Pruning evergreen trees might cause stress or deformity as there is really no need for it. For this reason, if space is at a premium, choose for a dwarf evergreen.
Having said that, evergreen shrubs occasionally require trimming or cutting into a hedgerow in order to branch out and grow larger. Moreover, you ought to cut off any unhealthy or dead branches. This calls for careful, sparing pruning in the midst of the growing season.
A Crucial Remark on Hydrangea
Hydrangeas are a confusing group since different kinds that are popular on Long Island follow different rules.
- Hydrangea macrophylla and Hydrangea serrata: These shrubs set their flower buds the year before, just like spring flowering shrubs, even though they are classified as summer bloomers.
- Selectively Pruning: Just prior to bud break in the early spring, selectively prune. Since you will be cutting off the flower buds for the season, pruning at this time of year should be restricted to dead wood removal and thinning techniques rather than reducing height.
- To Control Size: Prune as soon as the blooms start to dry in mid- to late July to control size. Usually, waiting until August is too late. That will negate the beautiful appearance of the dried flowers, but that is how their size can be controlled.
- H. quercifolia and H. petiolaris: To regulate size and shape, prune immediately following flowering.
- H. paniculata and H. arborescens: hard or gentle pruning works well for both H. paniculata and H. arborescens.
Special Notes on Hedges
Every time they are trimmed, hedges should be given the opportunity to grow a little larger. Each time you prune them back to the same “spot,” the individual plants will become weaker and have a shorter lifespan.
The shape is crucial; to ensure that all leaves receive sunlight and to guard against damage from snow or ice accumulation, the base or bottom should always be as wide as or wider than the top.
Pruning Tips
Plant pests are drawn to dead or decaying leaves more than healthy ones, and they are more likely to appear on a suffering plant, so trimming or pulling away yellowing or dead leaves is an easy approach to help keep them from taking up residence on your plant.
Maintaining the greatest possible appearance for your plant also involves removing any dead or yellowing leaves. Allowing a leaf to fully turn yellow is preferable to ripping it off at an early stage. A leaf that is about to drop loses all of its chlorophyll, or the green pigments that give leaves their color, and the plant takes up any remaining nutrients from the declining leaf.
There should be no resistance when removing the leaf, making it easy to do so. You can also remove any crispy, brown leaves from a stem or branch without damaging your plant. There are some specifics follow them:
- Prune for Shape: Whether you want a formal hedge or a tree that looks more natural, you may get the shape you want by pruning.
- Prune for Health: To stop the spread of illness and preserve the health of the plant, remove any dead, unhealthy, or damaged branches.
- Prune for Flowering: Pruning is necessary to encourage flowering on some plants, such as roses. Shorten the remaining branches and remove any dead, diseased, or crossing branches.
Tips for Pruning Houseplants
Understanding the growth pattern of the plant is necessary for proper pruning. Since new growth originates from the prominent bud at the end of a branch or stem, plants develop from the tip down.
Cutting off the dominating buds on specific stems and spacing the cuts to promote a variety of development is how you prune a plant to promote bushy new growth. Cut off a quarter of a branch, half of a branch, and the entirety of a branch back to the base. In this manner, the random growth pattern will fill it in when the plant leaves out again.
The act of merely removing any dead flowers is known as deadheading. When a plant blossoms, it expends energy on its blossoms rather than on new development. A flower draws energy from the plant even as it wilts. Deadheading is therefore frequently required in order to promote healthy development and extend the blooming time.
Maintaining cleanliness is crucial during pruning. Plants are susceptible to illness from any cuts made to their tissue. Thus, maintain the sharpness of your pruning tools and give them a quick wash and disinfection with a light bleach and water solution after each use.
To create new houseplants, the majority of houseplant cuttings can be preserved, rooted in a cup of water, and then potted. Even better, you may grow more succulent clippings by simply placing them in a pot of soil and keeping it moist. You should see new plants developing after a few weeks.
Recall that the best plant health and look result from using the right pruning techniques and timing. Do not hesitate to ask for more advice if you have any queries or worries.