Key Takeaways
Prune plants that bloom on old wood after flowering; cut back new wood bloomers before growth begins.
Disinfect tools between plants to prevent disease spread, and use sharp tools for clean cuts.
Leave some stems intact to support pollinators and enrich soil naturally.
Waiting until spring to clean up your garden and prune back perennials, trees, and shrubs can reduce cold damage and provide extra insulation to your plants through winter. But now that spring has finally arrived, what plants actually need pruning and what pruning techniques work best in spring?
In this guide, we’ll share 10 essential spring pruning tips that will help you spruce up your garden, improve the health of your plants, and boost plant growth and flowering too.
1. Know What Not to Prune
Not all plants benefit from spring pruning and pruning the wrong plants at the wrong time can do serious damage to your garden and leave you with flower-less plants. Plants that bloom early in the season or that flower on last year’s growth (old wood) should only be pruned once they finish flowering. This includes popular shrubs like lilacs, forsythia, old wood hydrangeas, dogwood, rhododendrons, azaleas, and camelias.
2. Know What to Prune
Plants that flower in summer to fall and that bloom on new wood produced during the current growing season are the best candidates for spring pruning. This includes panicle and other new wood hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, and crape myrtles, as well as daylilies and other herbaceous perennial plants with leaves and stems that die back in winter.
That said, new wood plants don’t necessarily need pruning in spring if they’re growing well and aren’t overgrown. Plus, you can leave dried out perennial stems and leaves in your garden to feed and protect the soil if you want to.
3. Time It Right
Plants that bloom on new wood do best if they’re pruned when the plants are still dormant in late winter to early spring. Plants that bloom on old wood should be pruned after they finish flowering.
However, herbaceous perennials that die back for the winter need to be pruned before the plants begin to leaf out in spring. Pruning after perennials start re-growing makes pruning more difficult and increases the likelihood that you’ll damage flower buds or tender, new stems while pruning.
4. Sterilize Tools
Before you begin to prune, make sure to thoroughly disinfect your pruners and loppers with a 10% bleach solution, 3% hydrogen peroxide spray, or rubbing alcohol. After that, clean your tools in between each plant you work with to avoid spreading diseases and pests from plant to plant.
5. Make Clean Cuts
Plants have a harder time healing ragged and jagged pruning cuts or areas where their bark is broken or stripped away during pruning. To avoid these issues, make sure that your pruners and loppers are sharp before you start and do your best to make clean and straight pruning cuts.
As long as your pruning cuts are sharp, there’s no reason to paint or apply sealant over pruned stems. This can trap pathogens and moisture underneath, making the situation worse.
6. Go Slow
When pruning, always use a light and careful touch. Cut just a few stems at a time and step away from your plant regularly to get a good look at how the pruning is going.
Pruning too many stems at once can stress out plants and leave you with a barren looking garden if you’re not careful. A good rule of thumb is to never remove more than 1/3 of the branches from shrubs, trees, and evergreen perennials in a single season; however, it’s perfectly safe to remove all of the dead stems and leaves from herbaceous perennials in one go.
7. Remove Damaged Branches
There are many ways to prune plants, but all plants have one pruning guideline in common: dead, damaged, and diseased branches should be removed as soon as you spot them. If your plants have sustained damage during winter, cut away all the broken stems and branches with clean pruning cuts so your plants can heal more readily. Stems and leaves that are visibly damaged with mildew or that contain eggs from pest insects may also need to be removed and destroyed to keep problems from spreading.
8. Prune to Improve Shape
Once you’ve tackled damaged branches and stems, the pruning process will vary depending on the types of plants you’re growing. Some flowers, like asters, benefit from the “Chelsea chop,” during which plants are cut back by 1/3 in late spring to encourage branching and flowering.
Shrubs and trees, on the other hand, are usually pruned more selectively to refine their shape abd thin out the center of the plant to let in more light and air. You’ll also want to remove suckers, branches with weak crotches, water spouts, and crossed or rubbing limbs.
Tip
Multi-stemmed shrubs, like lilacs, blueberries, serviceberries, and forsythia, benefit from an annual renewal pruning, which involves removing about ¼ of the plant’s oldest stems down to the ground so that new stems can grow in their place.
9. Leave Stems Long for Pollinators
Many native pollinators nest in hollow plant stems and take a year or more to complete their life cycle. Pruning stems a bit longer and allowing the stems to naturally degrade into your soil provides more benefits and sheltering spots for native bees and other insects.
For example, if you’d normally prune perennial plants like Joe Pye weed down to the soil line, make your pruning cuts a little higher so that there’s about 6 to 12 inches of stem above the soil line when you’re done. As your plants grow in spring, they’ll soon hide these stems from view.
10. Utilize Cuttings and Clippings
Throwing cuttings and prunings from perennials, trees, and shrubs in your trash will fill up your garbage can fast. It will also funnel valuable nutrients away from your garden that could otherwise help feed your plants.
Instead, put these cuttings to good use by chopping them into small pieces and adding them your compost pile as a nitrogen source. Alternatively, you can mulch cuttings with the mulching attachment on your lawnmower or with the help of a dedicated mulcher and then use the final product as a natural and budget-friendly garden mulch.
Read the original article on Better Homes & Gardens
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