Pre-Spring Pruning 101

As we inspect the shape of our garden gloves, Wellies, tools, and gardens, to survey the damage to plants and trees from this cold winter.  It's a great time to take some notes (on what plants to remove, replant, replace or prune), and start thinking about some pre-spring pruning. 

This post is loaded with easy-to-note tips when planning a pruning session in your garden, along with tools for pruning plants, trees and shrubs.

Pruning Tools:

Bypass pruners (left) which are best for most pruning jobs. They're scissor-like blade motion cuts clean and doesn't injure plant stalks.

Avil pruners (right) are great for live plant tissue so you can use these pruners to clear away dead wood, dry, and tough stems.


Keep pruning tools sharpened to ease pruning and so cuts are neater. This also helps your tools last longer. Use rubbing alcohol or Lysol to disinfect pruning tools between cuts, and as you move from plant to plant, this will prevent the spread of diseases among all the plants in your garden.




Pruning Trees:

Remove crossing, rubbing, diseased, split, dead branches, and V-shaped crotches this helps build stronger branch structures. Look up the specifics on pruning trees you're growing in your garden. 

Where you make a pruning cut is critical to a tree's response in growth and wound closure. Pruning cuts should be made between outside the branch collar (swollen area where branch joins trunk). 

A branch collar contains trunk or parent branch tissues, the tree will be damaged if you remove or damage it or it could even suffer internal decay from a improper pruning cut.

If you cut a tree or shrub back to stubs, you generate weak branches that lead to stubby knots at the ends of branches. These ends can split and damage the plant. So remove:

• Interior branches
• New growth at base of plants
• Old seedpods and crossing branches

Resist the urge to use wound dressing on pruning cuts the best healing agent is fresh air.

Pruning Roses:

Prune back last year's growth to a length that allows the rose to reach its height during the growing season. So with hybrid teas, cut canes back to 18-32 inches: miniatures, cut canes back to 4-10 inches.

Start pruning from center of rose bush outward and include canes that touch the ground. Once completed, you'll have three to five strong, healthy canes extending from the bud union (swelling where the rootstock joins the trunk).

Always prune to an outward-facing bud-eye. Prune at a 45-degree angle so the cut is above one third of an inch above that bud eye. Seal the cuts with white glue. Remove all suckers - growth from the rootstock.

• Prune old diseased canes down to the bud union.
• Prune spring-blooming climbers when they finish blooming
• Prune and train climbers to encourage horizontal canes for maxium flower production.

Pruning Ground Covers:

• Cut back to the ground before new growth starts.
• Ivy benefits from a hard pruning especially if it suffered from winter burn.

Pruning Shrubs and Vines:

• Avoid over shearing shrubs they're at their best in their in their natural growth habit.
• Evergreen trees and shrubs are best pruned in winter, only if they need it  for shaping and health.
• Boxwood's should be sheared after each flush of growth to encourage additional branches to develop. Only after winter to avoid damage in colder climates.
• Prune spring flowering shrubs and trees when they finish blooming.
• Prune climbing hydrangeas to control and remove loose hanging parts.

With some planning notes, tools and a little time you can help your garden get into the Spring of things a bit ahead of schedule. Before long you'll be enjoying your garden and extend the hardiness of your much loved plants this year.

Have you wandered about your garden yet in anticipation of Spring?

or Has winter cold kept you out of the garden loop?

google images, dailypress gardening, sunset magazine