Trees and pruning

Pruning 102 – The Basics of How To Prune

Thu, May 12, 2011 No Comments by Neil

You’ve got a good set of shears, you understand the general idea, and you know which tree needs it the most. You’ve got an idea about what it might need to look like when you’re done. The shears are in your hand and you’re staring at the tree, ready to start.

But fear grips you by the throat, as you’re just not sure how to make that first cut.

Today we’ll talk about a few of the basics on how to actually “make the cuts”.

First and foremost – maintain good tools. A good set of pruning shears costs a bit more than cheap ones, but you’ll be happy you spent the extra money. Like an uncle used to tell me, “If you think good tools are expensive, wait ‘til you buy cheap ones and see how expensive it gets!”

As to style, there are two basic styles of pruning shear – bypass shears and anvil shears. Bypass shears work like a scissor, and are far more common. I also find them a bit easier to use.

Sharp is really important when it comes to pruning shears – dull shears make unhealthy cuts.

Keep in mind that pruning isn’t the same as “shearing” or “tipping”. On some shrubs, (like privet), you might want to maintain a particular “shape” on the outside, so you regularly shear off everything that extents beyond that shape. This practice is generally quite unhealthy for trees, and should only be used on privet sorts of hedges.

When pruning, you’re going in to the interior of the tree, and selectively pruning the branches that you want gone.

Take a look at the tree from several different angles, and start to visualize the shape it wants to take. Your first step will be to prune for health.

  • Branches that are growing into the center of the tree should be removed.
  • Dead branches should be removed.
  • Weak unions should be corrected.

 

After you’ve pruned for health, you’ll start to help the tree to achieve the shape it needs. Do this slowly, looking again at the shape of the tree each time you remove some of it. Always keep in your mind’s eye the shape the tree needs to become, not the shape it is at this moment.

Image from TreesAreGood.com

When you remove a branch, cut just outside the “collar” where the branch joins the trunk (or larger branch). On larger branches, it’s best to cut the branch off beyond that point first, then make your final cut at the correct place.

Image from TreesAreGood.com

Often times, you’ll be removing pretty small portions of a branch, encouraging it to grow from one half of a union rather than the other. If a branch is pointing the wrong way, find a spot along it where you want to redirect the growth, and cut just beyond a bud that’s on the correct side of the branch. When you do that, the natural reaction of the tree will be to send a new shoot out at that bud, so you will have defined the direction of that new growth.

Prune just beyond a vigorous bud, or beyond where a small branch is already beginning to grow in the direction you want

At Prairie Eden, we’re happy to spend time with customers teaching them how to prune. Give us a call and set up a time for us to come by and work with you. It is an art, but one that anyone can learn. Once learned, most folks find it truly enjoyable and gratifying.

Download this useful PDF document from the US Forest Service. USDA_GuideToPruning

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Pruning 102 – When to Prune

Wed, May 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil

So, you’ve developed an idea about what needs to be pruned, now you need to figure out when different plants should get pruned. While I’ve addressed a little of that in the previous sections, let’s talk about it generally here.

A good rule of thumb (though not universally true) is to chase flowers with the pruning shears. In many cases, the best time to prune a plant is right after it flowers, for various reasons.

Flowering shrubs are a good example of this. In general, the best time to prune a flowering shrub is right after it blooms for the hear. Again, not universally true, but it’s a good rule of thumb. Lilacs bloom in May here along the front range in Colorado, so I prune my lilacs as soon as the blooms start to look ragged. Forsythia blooms earlier in the spring, so if I were going to prune a forsythia, I’d do it as soon as the green started to cover the yellow (not that there are many times when I’d prune a forsythia… I’m just sayin’…

I’ve talked before about root hardy perennials that need to be but back to the ground in the spring, such as butterfly bush here in Colorado. I won’t go into that in this article – here I want to talk about the more traditional pruning.

Most deciduous trees can be pruned just about any time. Personally, I favor pruning in the spring and late summer for most trees. By selectively pruning in the spring, I choose where I want the tree to send (and not send) energy for growth. This lets me define the shape of the tree as it grows, and avoids energy being wasted building unhealthy or unattractive growth that probably needs to be removed later. It also promotes more rapid growth, as the growth is less random and more focused.

My fall pruning has some of the same objectives as the spring pruning, though I’m really a bit more focused on preparing the tree for winter. I want to clear out branches that are likely to suffer from ice and snow in the winter, leaving the most healthy and attractive shape possible.

I want to mention problem trees here as well. The best example in our area is the Russian Sage. Considered by most people to be a “weed tree”, it was once planted throughout the suburbs as a hardy specimen tree. It has thorns, is unwieldy, and self-seeds abundantly. In many places planting them is actually outlawed.

However, if you’ve got a Russian Sage already growing that you don’t want to remove, there’s some good news for you. A Russian Sage can actually look very nice, provided you’re willing to spend the time pruning it. Not just in the spring or fall, but as often as once a month. The first time you get in and clean it up will be an ordeal, but if you stay after it in little chunks throughout the growing season thereafter, it’s far more manageable.

Another tree that we actually plant fairly often is the Ginella Maple, or Amur Maple. It has a fairly weedy style of growth, but if you stay after it 2 or 3 times a year, you can maintain a really nice tree that – if pruned right – actually resembles the beautiful Japanese Maples that our climate doesn’t allow.

On the other end of the spectrum are the trees that require rare pruning. Many of the oaks and hard maples fall into this category. Once you’ve got them pruned up to the height you want, their habit keeps them shaped for both good looks and health for the most part.

The important thing to remember is this: pruning mistakes are generally on the side of neglect rather than excess. Keep a set of good shears with you whenever you walk through your gardens – it’s almost certain there’s something that needs a bit of pruning…

 

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Pruning 101 – Annuals… Really?

Mon, May 2, 2011 No Comments by Neil

OK, it’s a stretch to call this pruning, but technically that’s what it is. Perennials have a cycle of growth and flowering that’s generally meant to produce a strong plant that can survive year after year – creating flowers and seeds is something that happens as part of that cycle. The “prime directive”, though, is the survival of the plant.

Image From VanOssLandscapesDotCom

Annuals, on the other hand, have evolved into machines that produce seeds, and seeds come from flowers. An annual takes a little time to establish root, but very quickly explodes into a flower machine, generally with the ability to give cover the garden in flowers through most of the growing season.

There’s often a trick, though, to keeping that explosion of flowers fresh and abundant. Remember that the real objective of the annual is to produce seeds, and flowers are just a means to that end. Many plants, as they begin to “feel” flowers maturing, will spend energy maturing the seeds from those flowers rather than producing new flowers. If you’re a birder, you want lots of those seeds maturing for the birds, but the gardener in you wants the flowers to continue!

To keep a plant focused on producing new flowers, we “deadhead” the old blooms. It’s a simple process of pinching back the old blooms as soon as they start to fade. The sooner you pinch an old bloom back, the sooner the plant’s energy will go into producing a new bloom for you to enjoy. With highly prolific flowers like marigolds, deadheading is a nearly daily activity if you’re going to stay ahead of it. An approach I like to take is to single out a few plants mixed into a group of annuals, and keep those plants deadheaded and producing new flowers. The other plants I deadhead far less aggressively, allowing many of the old blooms to mature into seeds for the birds to enjoy.

Another trick for many types of annuals is the selective pruning of blooms in order to end up with bigger blooms. Dahlias are a great example of where this is a good idea. By selectively removing buds and small blooms to leave only the ones that are placed the best on the plant, we can end up with much more robust blooms. It’s an energy thing – you’re removing places where the plant’s energy would go, channelling the energy of the plant into the blooms that you leave.

Finally, as the annuals grow throughout the season, we often want to control how big and leggy they get. Remember that a plant that’s a perennial in a mild climate is an annual in a more harsh climate. Many of them will spend energy trying to get bigger and bigger – a bigger plant is able to produce that many more blooms when it does bloom. However, by carefully (and sometimes aggressively) pruning back expansive annuals like annual Salvia, we can channel more of the energy into those blooms that we love to love.

 

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Pruning 101 – Trees

Fri, April 29, 2011 2 Comments by Neil

The heart of the pruning story – trees.

Image from Bonsai Tree Plaza Hawaii

With a very few exceptions, trees love to be pruned. They’re going to stay much healthier if the dead and crowded wood in the center of the tree is removed. Many of them will sucker up from the root, and these suckers sap the energy and strength from the tree if they’re not removed.

In addition, whenever we prune the top of the tree, (the half that’s above the ground), we allow the bottom half to provide that much more water and energy reserve to the part of the tree we really want to see growing – the parts we leave when we prune! There’s no downside to pruning a tree, and lots of upsides.

I always like to use the natural tendency of the tree to guide how I prune it. If it’s an apply tree that likes to spread out, then I like to help it spread more nicely by the way I prune it.

An important thing to keep in mind is that conifers need pruning much less than to deciduous trees. In fact, there are many conifers that may never need pruning, or need to be pruned very rarely. It’s very important to realize that with a few exceptions, a conifer grows primarily up a central trunk. So, if you “top” most conifers – meaning cut the top back – you’ve probably stopped the upward growth of that tree. Some will recover and build another central trunk, but many won’t.

With conifers, the most common pruning we do is to simply raise the “skirt” up a bit, so it’s easier to mow and maintain beneath the tree.

With a deciduous tree, the same need is nearly always there. We need to decide where the floor of the branching will be – how high off the ground it should be – and prune up to that level. Once that’s done, we want to look at the branches to identify which “trunks” we want to encourage, and which we want to remove because they’re growing at a weak angle or growing into the center of the tree rather than outward.

Stand back often and visualize the shape to help guide you through your pruning choices. Keep in mind that deciduous trees are generally very forgiving, and will help you cover mistakes quickly. By the same token, prune with a long-range plan, not helter-skelter.

If you’re not sure, it’s good to hire someone like us to come out and help you with your first round or two of pruning. We love to help people learn the basics of how you visualize, and how your prune. A round or two with a professional who really knows pruning will have you pruning like a pro in no time!

 

Pruning 101 – Wood Hardy Flowering Perennials and Shrubs

Thu, April 28, 2011 No Comments by Neil

Post 2 in our pruning series focuses on wood-hardy perennials and shrubs, and things get a little trickier. In general, for flowering perennials and shrubs, a good rule of thumb is to ONLY prune right after the plant blooms. Again, it’s not foolproof, but it’s a pretty good general rule. This is because most of these plants bloom each spring on new wood they created the previous growing season. Lilac is a great example of this – if you prune a Lilac in the spring before it blooms, you’ll see no blooms that year.

People often ask about pruning Clematis. The first thing to keep in mind that if you’ve found a good spot for a Clematis and it’s growing well, there’s very little risk that you’ll hurt your Clematis by pruning it. While picky about location, once you find the right location, Clematis are pretty hard to hurt. By the same token, ignoring them completely and letting them twine and vine untouched for years will delight them. They simply don’t care much whether you prune them or not.

That said, there are three general types of Clematis, and they each have slightly different pruning requirements (if you do choose to prune). Without going into detail, I generally just apply the same “prune after the bloom” logic, and it will generally work. Early in the spring, it’s common for people to worry about their Clematis, as it will look woody and dead. Be patient, and soon you’ll see new growth appearing on those woody old vines, followed by the profusion of green and bloom that make you love the plant so much. Soon after the green appears is a good time to gently look through the bundle of plant, and prune out any pieces that are obviously dead, though there will be fewer than you think!

Image of Lilac from TheFlowerExpert.com

While Lilac is the woody shrub people most often have questions about pruning, it is also the one that is most flexible in terms of how you can prune it. While it can be “trimmed” back after pruning, it’s characteristics are most favorably displayed by pruning it several times a year to resemble a tree more than a shrub. If you do this, then it’s good to get down into the base of the shrub early in the spring (before blooming) and cut out all the suckers coming up from the ground. Then the energy of the root will go into the bloom above. Following the bloom, start to shape the shrub with monthly prunings throughout the growing season, taking care after the first pruning to leave plenty of this year’s growth upon which next year’s flowers will occur.

There are a number of woody shrubs that people typically “trim back” in order to control how big they get. Forsythia and Viburnum would be examples. This pruning should occur right after flowering, and don’t be shy about cutting them back really hard. They might look bad initially, but within a few weeks you’re likely to be happy with the results.

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Pruning 101 – Root Hardy Perennials

Sun, April 24, 2011 No Comments by Neil

Root hardy perennials are pruned every winter by the cold. Their tops die back to nothing, and they start each spring again from the ground. For these, the only reason to prune during the growing season is looks.

For example, Salvia will bloom big and hard late in the spring, and will then promptly spend energy ripening the seeds left by those flowers. However, if we prune those plants back to below the flowers as soon as they’re done blooming, we’ll usually end up with another (albeit slightly less robust) bloom about a month or so later.

Deep purple Salvia in the background in their early bloom

With root hardy grasses, we generally leave them up all winter to add winter structure to the garden, but it’s important to cut them back to within several inches of the ground before they begin to grow in the spring. This isn’t for the health of the plant – it just looks better when the plants start shooting the green up.

There’s an important exception to the generalities here, and that’s the wonderful mums we love to see exploding with color in the fall. With mums, we should be pinching out the buds from the plant all the way up to the 4th of July. Maybe once a week, maybe every two weeks, but on a regular basis spend a little time with the mums as they grow to keep pinching those little buds off. This allows the plant to focus energy on the building of the plant itself during the first half of the summer. Then, when you stop pinching (or pruning) on the 4th of July, the plant shifts its energy from the green part of the plant into the making of the flower buds. The result is that the blooms all explode at about the same time in the fall – covering the plant in color – and the plant itself got to use much more energy to keep itself healthy and strong.

 

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Pruning 101 – Why Prune?

Fri, April 22, 2011 No Comments by Neil

A common question – what get’s pruned and why?

Like most gardening answers, it depends. In general, we prune for one or more of the following reasons:

  • To shape the plant that’s being pruned.
  • The plant needs to be pruned for its health.
  • The plant is overgrown and needs to be “tamed”.

Let’s start with plant health. In most cases, nature has developed a pruning methodology for each plant. Either ice storms, snow storms, wind, insects, disease, or severe cold will take a toll on different plants to different degrees. While this might be an OK result out in the wilderness, it rarely results in the look and feel we want in a garden.

As the steward of the plants in our garden, it’s up to us to replicate the benefits of natural pruning, but hopefully end up with more attractive results. This is where we come to the first reason for pruning – to end up with the shape we want in a plant.

As we shape the plant, we need to keep in mind what the plant needs for its health as well, so that we integrate the shaping we’re doing for our pleasure with the needs of the plant for its health. Most of the time, there’s no inherent conflict between the two objectives. I suspect this is because our minds eye has come to develop an appreciation for the natural state of plants, which is driven by those forces of nature that will prune if we don’t.

In the next posts, we’ll talk about how nature works, and how we need to work as garden stewards with pruning shears in our hands.

 

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