Summer pruning?
For many people pruning time is the winter. Everyone knows that is the time to prune. The problem is that it isn’t true. In the past I have talked about the value to summer pruning fruit trees to control their size.
For new plantings summer pruning is a way to keep plants more compact, direct their growth in the direction you want and is a method to control their size.
Tipping plants while they are young keeps long whippy growth from developing. Depending on the growth I often prune new growth back about 50%. What this does is forces additional branching and more compact growth. I just recently pruned a new planting of azaleas back. Often I see azaleas never pruned and they are leggy, don’t make a good bloom show and just aren’t attractive.
People that do prune often wait until the plant is growing larger than they want.
When you do this you develop a thick surface of foliage, but no depth to the foliage. This means if you want to reduce the size you are cutting into old dry wood without any foliage. It also means any new growth is allowing the plant to get too large and you have to prune again and again. More work and often less bloom. A pruning technique that thins and removes wood back farther means less frequent pruning.
If you start controlling the size of plants while they are young means the root system doesn’t get as large. Once the root system gets really going it means the plant wants to continuing to grow. Again this means more frequent pruning.
I suppose this is where a comment on choosing plants that want to stay in bounds is in order. As a designer one of the most common comments I get is “can’t I prune that back and keep to 3’ or 6’”? The problem is the answer is yes. Often unspoken is the additional comment “ why do you want the additional work. People expect to prune their yard every month to keep it in bounds. Realistically you should have to prune once or twice a year. Hedges and roses excepted
Gardening should be fun. For most of us monthly pruning to keep plants under control is not what we want to do in our lives. Proper pruning and proper plant selection can mean less work.
