Diana's Garden Centre

Gardening Tips

Pruning

Proper pruning is essential for developing and maintaining a robust and beautiful landscape. This will ensure that your plants are the desired shape and size that you wish them to be. It is wise to mentally visualize what your plant should look like at maturity and make small pruning when the plant is young. This will result is an overall stronger plant in the years to come. Heavy pruning of mature plants is much harder on them and may not give you the results you may require. You should prune your plant for one or all of these following reasons only. Pruning should be done to redirect the growth of the plant (shaping). Pruning should also be encouraged to ensure your plants great health by removing dead or diseased pieces. Lastly you should prune to increase the quantity and quality of the fruits from your trees.

You should consider pruning your plants in the proper season. Little harm will come to your plant when you prune it during the dormant season. Pruning during the plants active season will harm your plant. Generally the dormant season is late winter or early spring, before the new growth starts. You should note that the exception to this is ornamental plants that bloom in spring that should be pruned after they have finished blossoming.

When starting to prune you should remove dead, diseased or damaged branches. You should also start by pruning the larger branches first; cutting away the braches you do not want and keep the rest. The remaining main branches should be evenly spaced around the tree. Now you should remove water sprouts, suckers, weak crotches and crossed branches. You should have strong main branches, thin branches that are well spaced and lateral or secondary branches should be thinned to ease the competition for light, water and helping improve nutrient absorption. Remember not to feel rushed as to decide what branch to remove as you may always remove it the next year.

Knowing that there are only two types of pruning cuts will help you to be able to prune most effectively. There is a cut called the removal cut which the entire purpose is to remove a large branch solely to assist the centre of the tree to get more light. The following paragraphs direct you to ensure you make the correct pruning technique for this cut. The final type of cut is called a heading cut. This is a cut that is made anywhere between two nodes on a branch. This heading cut acts to stimulate the dormant buds below the cut to break and develop new branches. This is great to make a fuller and bushier tree or shrub and is most notable in hedge shearing.

You should cut heavy tree limbs in three stages. First you should make an under cut to the limb at the point you want the branch to be removed, this will stop the tree from possibly tearing any bark off as the limb falls to the ground. Then you should make the major cut to remove the limb over the cut that you have just made, allowing the limb to freely fall without any tree damage. Now the last cuts should be to remove any little jagged pieces that may be remaining, to ensure a healthy tree void of catching any possible disease.

Proper pruning techniques are essential to the survival of your plants. Remember that the basic rule is to not leave any stubs for which to allow insects and disease to infect the plant. Also it is very important to use sharp shears or saws as they make clean cuts, the jagged cuts from dull equipment makes your plant more prone to heal slower enhancing the possibility of disease to enter the plant.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this article about pruning. Please know that you may contact me, Diana, by calling Diana's Garden Centre or just simply stop by and I would love to chat with you about your pruning ideas! Remember our goal is to fill your heart with gardening joy!