Post #65A Trimming and Pruning
Post Description: Trimming and pruning in the south Florida forest garden.
Maintenance in the garden. There may come a time over the course of a year where you find you have your garden growing smoothly. There’s nothing more to plant. Everything is well fed and the garden beds are thoroughly weeded.
This is a good time to relax and find that quiet spot you made for yourself to sip a cup of tea and take in the simple beauty of the birds fluttering amongst the flowers.
It is also a perfect time to pay attention to what needs trimming or pruning.
While trimming can be done pretty much anytime, a bit more care must be taken with pruning. If it is not the proper time to prune, pull out your trusty garden notebook and take some notes on what needs to be attended to when the time is right.
Trimming versus Hard Pruning
There is a difference between trimming and hard pruning. Trimming involves cutting back plants mostly for cosmetic reasons. Hard pruning is done to cut back dead or diseased wood or to thin out stems to benefit the health of a plant.
Trimming can be done anytime for shaping and keeping things neat. Keep pruning shears with you on your day garden walks and attend to the trimming as needed. Some plants grow faster than others and need regular haircuts, others only need a trim every couple of months.
Hard Pruning
Hard pruning should be done right after the plant finishes blooming or fruiting, depending on what you are growing the plant for.
Pruning guides written for other parts of the country will tell you to prune in winter, when the plants are dormant. In our climate, most plants do not go dormant, but tropicals will grow more slowly during our cool season, making that a good time to prune if the plant isn’t grown for flowers or fruit.
Why Prune?
There are several reasons to prune your plants rather than just leaving them to grow as they like.
To Shape a Plant
It is important to start young when shaping any plant, but especially so with trees and large shrubs. Since they get larger every year until they mature, you will live with the consequences of their shapes for a very long time. Some mistakes in pruning or lack of it can actually become pretty costly later. Every tree or shrub should be given an initial pruning for a healthy shape.
To Stimulate a Plant’s Growth
When you properly prune a tree or shrub, it will stimulate the growth of the existing buds and encourage the roots to dig deeper. The plant will grow bigger and stronger than another of the same species, planted right next to it at the same time, that hasn’t been pruned.
For Overall Health
Especially for young plants, and those you have purchased bare-root, they usually lose a lot of their feeder roots when they are uprooted for transplant. This leaves the tree out of balance with its above ground parts. Pruning the branches back gives the feeder roots time to grow back and brings the plant back to a healthy equilibrium.
How to Best Prune
In general, when pruning any plant, keep in mind the shape you are looking for and how tight you want it to look. Keep the following principles in mind while trimming as well
- Make cuts on a slant so water does not pool on the surface of the cut. If the plant has visible buds (little knobs along the branches), cut just above a bud, and the bud will grow into a new branch.
- Note the direction of the buds and choose one growing in the direction you want the new branch to grow. That direction should be away from the center of the plant. This works especially well with roses. Many plants that do not have visible buds will sprout two branches just over a cut.
- Pruning stimulates the plant to put on new growth. If you want it to bush out, cut all the branches back by about a third, evenly, all the way around. This will give it a nice mounded shape, and the leafy new growth will fill in the spaces between.
- Completely remove any branches that cross other branches, rather than just cutting them back. Your goal is to open up the center of the plant so there is good airflow and exposure to sunlight.
- If its branch structure is very tangled or there are mostly dead twigs all over it, a shrub may be renovated if it is still alive. To do this, cut the shrub back by half each year for two years, or go for broke and cut the whole thing off at once about 6” to 12” from the ground. Sometimes this helps with disease as well.
Tropicals are more likely to survive an extreme hard pruning like this. Even so, be sure to water thoroughly before cutting, then continue to monitor extra water needs over the next few weeks.
Grafted Plants – If a plant is grafted, which is often the case with hibiscus, gardenias, roses and fruit trees, never cut off a trunk below the graft. Look for a big knob part way up the trunk, often fairly close to the ground.
If you cut below the graft, the growth you will get will be the less desirable rootstock instead of the more ornamental or flavorful cultivar that was grafted on top and will now be gone.
Variegated plants – If you have variegated plants, and you want to keep them variegated for aesthetics, watch them for all-green twigs and branches and remove those immediately.
Variegation in nature is usually caused by viruses, and breeders introduce these to get pretty variations in color.
Nature is always experimenting, trying to give the plants a better shot at survival. So variegated plants will get all-green branches here and there. If these are not kept ruthlessly cut out, they will eventually take over, and you will be left with an all-green plant.
Additional Pruning Tips
There is a lot to learn when it comes to tree pruning, so it is good to ask nursery staff to show you, or get a good book on the subject. But here are some general tips to consider:
- Trees – Trees should already have had their first shaping pruning when you buy them. Look for a balanced shape and an open branch structure before bringing one home.
- Shrubs – Look for the same things when shopping for shrubs. Smaller shrubs are not as picky as trees and large shrubs, and can be pruned any year, or just kept trimmed if you don’t mind them eventually reaching their natural size all around.
- Palm Trees – Unlike most plants, which have many buds, palms have only one part that makes new growth, which is the crown, the very top of the plant. Prune Palms only by removing dead or hanging branches. If you cut the crown, the tree will die.
- Use hand tools – Pruning with hand tools is healthier for the plants and gives as neat a result as you desire. You can go for a formal, clipped look, or a more natural one. It gives you time to slow down and see what’s going on in your garden, and to take the best care of each individual plant. They can live much longer and will look far better when cared for in this way.
- Not power tools! – Don’t use power hedge trimmers except for plants that truly need shearing – most do not like it. You will end up with a skeleton of messy branches with an outer layer of leaves, and the plants will deteriorate over time. Power clippers chew up the leaves and branches, leaving messy cuts that allow moisture to pool and disease to take hold.
- Care for your tools properly – Always use sharp tools and clean them off when you finish. If they get wet, dry them before putting them away and oil them once a year to help prevent rust. If you cut diseased plants, dip them in strong alcohol or a mild bleach solution after cleaning and before using them on any other plants.
- Take it day by day – Trim or prune a few plants each day as needed, and the job will not be overwhelming. It is better to grow fewer plants and be able to care for them all than to grow too many and blitz them with power hedge trimmers, creating a garden full of unhappy plants that don’t look good.
As with all aspects of gardening, learning to properly maintain your plants takes a bit of trial and error. For example, before I understood not to cut below the graft of a fruit tree, I turned my gorgeous Meyer lemon into a Griffin orange tree! Fortunately, it still produced great fruit for lemonade.
Share your struggles and your wins with us! What was your Meyer-cum-Griffin moment? Or have you had a recent triumph while pruning in your garden? We love hearing from you!
Until next Time, Happy Gardening!
Mary