David covers the pruning techniques and timing for a variety of tree and shrub types.
all right everybody Welcome to today’s plant Clinic um David’s going to be covering pruning today and I am about to send out a link in the chat to a pruning sheet which has a breakdown of a bunch of different plants and information on pruning for each of those um I know some people have difficulty accessing these uh in this format so we’ll be following up um again after the call probably tomorrow with the spreadsheet and then if you still can’t access it then email me and I’ll figure out another format to send it to you end that usually covers all on our basis um all right so for anybody who is new and has not attended these plant clinics before uh welcome uh this is a webinar format so if you have questions you’re actually going to type those into the Q&A box and this is going to be a big class today so um David and I were talking beforehand about how usually he goes for about 45 minutes we are expecting to go closer to the full hour today and I believe we’re going to hold all of our questions until the end is that accurate David that’s correct yes okay because just pruning is a big topic so we want to make sure he has time to get you guys all the information that you need um if you have any questions or issues during the class please feel free to send me a chat or a question I will be watching that throughout um and we are recording this class so if you need to leave for any reason that will go up on our YouTube channel generally within about 24 hours all right that covers everything on my end David I’ll let you get started well good afternoon everybody thank you for joining us today it’s such a beautiful day outside I know you’d probably be happier out there in the garden working but um that’s good we’re just going to take a little bit of your afternoon and then I’m going to leave you this huge to-do list um that you can go out and get to work on right away uh cuz Sally had mentioned we’re going to discuss pruning today and what I’m focusing on are mostly shrubs small trees and shrubs that you would be pruning right now today uh really a lot of this I think the middle of winter January and February is the ideal time to do it but uh was all set to go a couple weeks ago and then because of an illness had to cancel that so now I’m just trying to emphasize what we’re talking about today is like you don’t need wait you don’t really want to wait too long you want to take the information that we share today and go outside and get to work on that um and like I said we’ve got these nice temperatures so it’s good time to do that U I said you know we we’ve got plenty of time to cover this but I was telling Sally you usually have a lot of questions involved and I like to provide sometimes a little you know or plenty enough detail um on exactly how and what to prune so my schedule here here is like I said I’m going to go through kind of got a bunch of slides because I think with pruning it’s something you have to see uh you can’t really describe or tell something seeing so I’ve got examples of you know small trees and flowering shrubs different pruning techniques and I want to be take our time to go through that um and then like I said we’ll um open up to take your calls through the chat and we’ll stay here for like I said next hour and hopefully get all of your questions answered so I think that’s pretty much it and with that I’m going to go ahead and get us started great uh I’d like to begin by saying um I am talking about pruning with your feet on the ground U I don’t want to see anything with people going up on ladders climbing trees doing anything like that so if we’re talking about pruning uh shade trees or trees that you actually have to you know get off the ground to do it that’s what I want you to call an arborist uh so that is not today’s topic um that’s something I’ll just tell you to call an arborist they do have um arborist do have a certification uh process where you can ask for what they call an Isa that stands for international Society of arric culture certified Arborist that means that they have a minimum level of experience they’ve sign signed a code of ethics uh they’ve passed an exam you know demonstrating their competency in Tree Care um and so if you have big trees shade trees that need care and attention uh Callin arborous that’s not today’s topic first of all we really want to make sure that we are safe about what we’re doing um secondly why are we pruning plants uh the plants are trees and shrubs do not require pruning uh we prune them to make them the plants that we want them to be I was in a class with Jake Hy Arbor for Smithsonian I really like the way he said that because it captures a lot of my thoughts when he said we’re pruning to make them the plants that we want them to be so before you pick up a pair of shears or Clippers or a saw think about what and why you’re doing this most of the time when I’m pruning um or talking to you about pruning most of the time is because the plants are getting too large for the space that we’ve provided that really is U an issue of plant selection which takes me back to another good Arbor friend of mind Peter deal would say what’s the most important tool the most important tool that you could have when you start pruning you know I say it’s here it’s your it’s your brain it’s your thinking it’s it’s having a plan and know so a lot of this really begins with your plant selection um and of the plants out growing that space um maybe it wasn’t the best choice of plant or placed correctly but we’re talking about real life and in real life uh we inherit plants we make mistakes or time goes by there’s a thousand different reasons um why but a lot of times we do need to go in and reduce the size on Plants they’re getting a little bit larger if we are on top of our game what we would really prefer is that we are pruning to maintain the size so that we’re doing pruning more frequently um to maintain our landscape plants in good condition as opposed to allowing them get overgrown and then reduce the size that’s there we also go in there because it might be a matter of shaping or sculpting the plant so these are kind of all aesthetic considerations we’ll talk talk about some plants where the pruning can influence their flowering and there are times where we can improve the plant’s Health uh with young trees in particular uh and those are the ones I’ve talked about most because they’re they’re small uh we’re in the nursery business you know recently planted uh if you have trees that wouldve been planted in the ground for like the past five years or something we can develop a good structure in that so we might be pruning for structural strength and integrity in there on some cases we might be pruning out um branches that were damaged because of an insect or disease problem so this does uh the pruning proper pruning does help the plant when it’s done correctly in terms of improving its structure improving its Health um but like I said primarily we’re doing it for management of its size it shape and those kind of things so all good reasons uh but I don’t want you to feel obligated you know if there’s a tree in the backyard and it looks beautiful and it looks healthy and everything’s good just enjoy it you don’t have to go out and do any of this um couple terms that I’m going to be using many times most of the time when I’m pruning to improve the structure or the branching uh eliminating Crossing branches this kind of thing what I’m really talking about is thinning and when I say thinning I’m removing an entire Branch um or I’ll use the word Twigs because they don’t have to be large size but as my little diagram goes in there I’m actually thinning out branches I’m selectively removing branches so as I talk about thinning or selective thinning that’s typically what I mean of heading uh which I’m over here you’ll see where these little tips are being cut off there are times when we do this sort of heading cut that might be actually to promote branching because where we make these cuts it it the it makes these lateral buds start to grow out more so there are times when we want our plants to be thicker bushier fuller um where we might do more of these heading type cuts out of the tips whereas um a lot of times if it’s on small trees we’re doing more this kind of structural thinning that’s there so as I said the best way to demonstrate this or to explain I think is by just showing one um and and many of you probably seen some of these pictures before they’re these are pruning jobs that I had done some time ago but they’re they’re oldies but goodies uh so this is a weeping red butt uh you can see they’re planted in front of a a townhouse a beautiful specimen plant you know it was selected for that spot because that sculpted cascading weeping form that it has flowers for us in very early early spring you know typically in April maybe we’ll see blooms in March this year um and then also you have that just distinctive form as it leavs out through the growing season so this had been the ground several years it’s really doing its job there’s nothing wrong with this of but the owner it asked me of for a little bit of guidance on pruning essentially what they were was they didn’t know what to do they felt like it needs pruning but I don’t want to mess it up and I’m not sure exactly what to do uh in fact this was of one of my colleagues that that used to work here years ago uh who had a degree in um in landscape architecture but when it came down to some of the Hands-On stuff she didn’t want to make mistakes or anything wrong so what we did uh you know Amy strong is her name and so we look this over together and before we start making any Cuts this mean before we have any pruners in our hands we’re setting up a plan of action right we’re selecting goals we’re kind of setting our objectives for this and we’re discussing how and what we want to cut because these are all they are all judgment calls and I’m GNA go back to my before picture here when I’m looking at this tree and I’m evaluating what I see is a beautiful structure in here if I look at this and I see this Branch cascading out off that another Branch cascading these out so when I look at that this plant what my goals or what my objectives are is I I love this cascading weeping form almost like a fountain is kind of what I visualize coming out of there and I want to accentuate that I don’t want to do anything to disturb that I want to accentuate it but as you look in there there’s a lot of secondary growth as this what I’m going to call this sort of congested look where you just can’t see the best form of the plant so here it’s the right size you know I’m okay with the size of it and everything like that my goal is to really thin out these branches accentuate the form and shape of the tree um and that’s we’re looking at is talking about which one of these branches needs to go which one of these branches um are going to stay so after we sort of come to this agreement on exactly um what our goals are what our objectives are of we we will start pruning but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything so on trees I’m saying trees this applies to Woody shrubs you know Woody plants in general of every time we cut them every time we in wound them that is an injury it’s a wound now plants have adapted ways that they can respond to wounds plants have adapted to ways they are shedding organisms so they shed leaves they shed branches so they have these adaptations of ways of coping with that and the way we do it is if you look very closely on here if you’re look at a tree you’ll start to see what’s called this Branch collar right this little swollen area again to me I always think of like this this like you kind of like your your shoulder joint you can actually see how this branch is fused together if you were to cut through here and do a diagram you can see this is where the branches emerg that branch is actually connected into the um main trunk of the tree this growth that’s out there um and it has this little swollen enlarged area that’s there so what we call a branch collar that goes through and then some trees it’s easier and some is harder to see this is where the tree has naturally evolved and adapted to shed that Branch um it has a way what we call compartmentalizing any Decay that occurs in there so when we injure this tree this shows where this Branch was cut off and I have this little tiny pocket of Decay essentially the tree isolates that compartmentalizes it seals it over and life goes on wonderfully if I injure that collar like in the old days we used to do like this straight down cut might be called a flush cup if I injure that Branch collar I have now disrupted this tree’s ability to compartmentalize or defend or wall off that decay and that decay will continue to spread back into the main trunk this here so that’s the other thing I want to say before we actually start pruning is identify where these Branch cers are and with your Cuts we want to do everything possible not to injure that so our goal is we want to cut alongside that Branch Coller don’t want to leave a stub but we also don’t want to create a wound or injury that’s going to lead to Decay so this shows a um a lace spk Elm out in our parking lot here uh we had removed some of the lower branches off of here just to allow traffic and vehicles to pass underneath and you can see what happens so this this what looks like this little enlarged area that is the branch col area and if you look real closely and use your imagination each year this forms a new layer of wood right each year puts on a layer of wood second year it forms a layer of wood third year forms a layer of wood so it took for this wound it took about five years to be completely 100% sealed but this did seal itself up um the tree is compartmentalized any decay in there that’s a good pruning cut here’s another one that came off and that sealed over completely that’s what we want to see that’s a good thing here that that Branch collar was injured um so this tree was not able to seal or close that wound up and you can see a little Hollow created inside there now this isn’t the end of the world a lot of wildlife requires these Hollows um so just like this little tree FR to them this becomes a home it’s could be bats squirrels woodpeckers owls you know bluebirds a lot of our natural Wildlife needs these Hollows to exist and occur so I guess not to confuse things we don’t want to cause injuries we don’t want these things to happen but they do occur naturally branches break in storms that kind of thing if you find these cavities and Hollows that are in there that’s not the end of the world um it’s Wildlife needs that our habitat needs them I’m trying to encourage people if it’s in the back of your property if it’s not a problem you’ve got trees that decaying or dying leave them be because there’s so much life that does um require that at the same time that’s a structural uh defect it means now that tree’s more vulnerable to damage injury so I don’t want to create these damages but it’s not the end of the world either don’t create those wounds now I’m going to get back to my tree with all that kind of background talk uh so step one the way I like to do this and this not right or wrong I find this the easiest way and I think easiest way to explain so as Amy I were looking over the tree our first step is hey let’s remove any dead branches that to me is kind of like a no-brainer we’re going to go in this tree over the years has some dead branches um you can see what she’s doing here she’s cutting through a dead Branch this shows you a branch had been removed that Branch collar is still there intact it will um seal itself up you see this one where a little stub was left in place that kind of prevents it from sealing so I don’t want to cause any injuries I don’t want to leave any stubs that’s a nice good um pruning cut right there after I have gone through and removed the dead branches because that’s kind of the easy stuff now I go in and this this is what we talking about I start removing some of those branches that we Crossing and rubbing because this tree the way it’s formed it’s going all these different directions some of these branches are crossing over top of each other I’m really trying to create a little more of this cascading outwards type of look um I will mention U as you saw earlier 909 5% of the pruning we’re talking about today you can do with these two tools a good pair of hand pruners that will normally cut branches that might be up to 3/4 inch diameter if it’s more than that 3/4 inch diameter I reach for pruning saw but really these two tools will allow you to do pretty much everything that you’re seeing here today so now you start to see these pruning Cuts here you see these little areas where that wood is exposed this is where you can imagine there was a branch that was coming over here just trying to remove that direction that coll is still in there but we’re starting to thin this out again that’s what I’m talking about this selective thinning um where I’m taking out Crossing branches rubbing branches branches that are detracting from the overall shape of the tree so again you can see where I took a pruning cut here um but we’re going through here living all this place we’ve gotten down to where I feel like I’m leaving a pretty nice structure in there we’re getting pretty close to what I call finished so I removed the dead branches I removed some of the crossing the rubbing branches things I felt were a detraction from the tree um this is where we’re getting towards our finished product I think this I might even be it after I have done my structural pruning then I might go in and do just a little bit of cosmetic burning a little bit of shaping that’s my after that’s where I might go down here and shorten up some of these out the tips but so this is what we have the nice thing about doing a pruning in the winter this too much you can see the structure of the branching um you don’t have all the foliage and leaves kind of um taking away from it there’s no sap flowing in there there’s no insect activity there’s no real disease activity so again this is really a great time of year to do it I like to do that before the growth has started a lot of our trees because of the warm weather and stuff are getting an early start this year so get to it this is the next spring um I’m going to call that mission accomplished I this turned out beautifully uh you can see it flowering there with some of the leaves are going um so that’s really for a small tree and whether that is a weeping maple everybody’s um trying to figure out what to do with those uh here is a weeping red bud you can show yes you can prune them um you could use these exact same kind Concepts if it was just a a you know a dogwood or or you know almost any other tree in your garden of so I’m G to switch gears a little bit and talk more about shrubs uh shrubs it’s all the same ideas the same Concepts same ideas of but here what I’m doing is I’m going to talk about thinning out some of the older branches so if I have a multi- stem shrub is shown here a lot of times over the years um that older growth may become less productive in terms of its flowering it’s blooming um you may get to where there’s so much growth within that plant you’re not getting good air circulation you’re not getting the maximum sun in there and simply by opening up this canopy can kind of rejuvenate or renew the plant um one example might be I have this red twig dogwood back here behind of the very young juvenile growth on that is the brightest deepest red color as that Branch gets to be about three years old then it starts to get brown and Woody nothing wrong that’s the normal growth of it but we again because we want it to be the plant we want it to be I might go in there and periodically do some thinning to keep that young juvenile growth in there another great example um is is I’m talking about crepe myrtle um so this is um the natural form of crepe myrtle what I’m going to call a multi- stem tree of so this is to me you can see where somebody’s gone in and thinned out some of those branches this is an example of good pruning where they have maintained the natural form of the tree um allowed that natural shape that’s in there but thinned it out so cosmetically aesthetically you can see the structure you can see the branching to me it looks a little prettier by allowing better air circulation through there maybe we can cut down a little bit on some of the mildew problems uh to me that’s a pretty nice looking plant and this would be the same effect that we see as it flowers in the summer so that is again the way I prefer to see them Pro runed and kept in a more naturalized style one thing I didn’t get into but crep myrtles um or didn’t see here crep myrtles of course they produce these little Woody seed capsules that often persist up here if you want to go in there and clean them out more power to you if um you don’t feel like you want to do that don’t feel that you absolutely have to um I’m also want to introduce to you what I call a renewal pruning so another option that we have is some of our plants that grow really vigorously really fast get really big or plants like you saying like the red twig dogwood um we do a similar thing with roses a lot of plants in our landscape we can rejuvenate them they’re they’re old they’re overgrown they’ve gotten too large they’re not producing as well a bunch of different possibilities there are some plants that we can go in and really just cut them down down like you see here you’ll get these multiple stems start to redevelop and then thin them out as we go again not trying to say right or wrong or anything it’s just a question of what your goals what your objectives are so here is crep Mertle if you look you see where this line is right across all these bo bo bo bo boom this is an example what I’m calling that renewal or Rejuvenation pruning uh this is the entrance to a um subdivision and the landscaper made their choice they’re probably getting big getting leggy not creating the effect they want so they went in one winter just bump bum bump cut across here to straight line they responded by producing all these shoots and then I’m sure they went in there periodically and thinned them out to get this kind of a look going and here again is the finished product you know again this is probably within a few years doesn’t happen instantly probably about 3 years after the renewal pruning was done and they’ve got back to looking this really nice um effect that’s in there so I see all this talk that’s on the you know Facebook and the internet you know all kinds of people talking about pting renewal pruning naturalizing you know all these kind of again I don’t take sides in what is the right or the wrong way to do any of this it’s real comes down to what your goals what your objectives are um I thought this was a pretty cool example of I’m G to say kind of almost a combination of the two uh examples it’s this is uh again crepe mtle on a in a business park that you can see they had gotten they just gotten too big for the location they were in they weren’t really serving their purpose so here the landscap company came in um did a pretty hard what I’m going to call topping or or Rejuvenation type pruning on them they didn’t bring them down as low as the ones we looked at before but let’s say I I bring them down to this height of maybe it’s about 10 feet that’s in that picture they also went in and thinned out some of the branches so I’m saying we’re doing both the Rejuvenation and the thinning and combination this is the same planting that same summer in July so not this isn’t going to work with every plant but a real vigorous grower like crate myrtles um allows you to do that pruning again it’s not as naturalized I showed you in that first picture what I like is a more naturalized look um but I thought hey this is kind of a nice compromis middle of the road and I’m trying to give you the freedom um to do what you think is going to work best in your circumstances okay so um before you start cutting this I’m going say you do want to know what your plants are what you’re working with um a lot of times pruning can influence um their flowering and how they grow afterwards what’s happening in your landscape uh we look at this this obviously have a diagram of a twig here the we call apical butd right the termin is at the tip of there um usually plants have a little bit larger bud and this as it breaks growth in Spring is going to determine where that new growth at so my diagram shows um it sets that terminal bud and that might be end of that year next spring the new grow starts to pop out it comes up here sets another terminal Bud um and then year so on so on uh a lot of our ornamental shrubs this is trees also they produce a flower Bud the previous year so a lot of plants I’m going to use um in this case I’m going to talk about by burnum um so this by burum that we see here we can see it put this growth on it set that apical bud but this is a flower Bud your flower buds are usually much larger you’ll look at and when you look closely you’ll see this on aelas you’ll see it on viburnums you’ll see it on dogwoods um this terminal bud is significantly larger that’s a flower Bud uh so you want to have that knowledge because if I go in there and I prune them now as I’m instructing you you will be cutting the flowers off that’s totally fine doesn’t hurt the plant it’s just a question making sure that that’s the decision that you want to make so if I talked about crep Myrtle earlier that’s what we talked about flowering on newwood crepe myrtle does not have any flower buds if I go out and I prune it today it starts growing usually towards late April May and then it produces flower buds all in that same growing season so it’s flowering on New Growth many of our other plants are spring Bloomers particularly like this by burnum It produced that flower Bud last year in August it carries that bud through the winter and then it’s going to open for us in spring so you don’t even absolutely have to know the plant but you do need to be able to identify these buds so this is a vegetative bud that’s going to produce leaves this is a flower bud that’s going to produce blossoms so many of our spring flowering plants um that that I’m telling you let’s wait and prune after they flower so and I think about the Andromeda back here right Japanese Andromeda Pierce Japan they have their flower buds on them so I really don’t want to cut those flower buds off so I’m not going to prune those aelas chamus lilacs Mount Laurel red Den some of our hydrangeas hydranges are kind of a mess because they have some that grow on new some that bloom on old but things like the oak leaf hydrange climbing hydrange the big leaf which is often called or the macril Hydra hydranges those already have flower buds on them so you you just have to consider that you can prune them but it will cost you blossoms So you you’re making that informed decision that’s in there uh so these you might want to hold off on but again that’s personal choice of another thing so I’m all over the place here I know talking about timing and methods of pruning and stuff but it will make sense um is sometimes I’m going to talk about shearing these are more those heading Cuts we talked about when I Shear the plant like we’re cutting with scissors there I’m shaping it it also induces the plant to do a produce a profusion of growth and tips so on Evergreens where we are doing Hedges or sculpting them or shaping them we will do this um again this is all Aesthetics because we want to shape them or manipulate their growth increase the density it’s in there so we’re just cutting those tips off now where this becomes a little bit of an issue and I’m telling you you have to make decisions there on this so we talked about viburnum right today they have their flower buds on there so if you were to go out there and Shear your viburnum like this this is basically the effect that you get most of those tips most of those flower buds were cut off of this plant at the time that somebody decided to Shear it this plant is the same plant same species but we did not prun it in there um me if I have a choice I know which own I’m going with is like here it looks like a shrub it looks naturalized it’s colled with fragrant blossoms are on here um this you know it’s just a geometric form randomly sitting out there with no blooms so again both the method and the timing of pruning can affect this if I have a viburnum I’m probably going to do selective thinning on that uh and I might even wait and do that after it flowers to preserve the blooms get yeah no harm done to the plant they’re both healthy plants just a different outlook on all right so now I’m going to switch gears talk a little bit about Evergreens and then we’re going to open up the chat for all your questions um Evergreens can be tricky U if if we’re talking about a conifer a needled Evergreen like this all of their growth emerges from this terminal bud that’s near right so we see buds here we see buds here we see buds here um if I go further down that Branch if I’m a mugo pine or something as I go down this Branch you’ll start to see we don’t have as many tips we don’t have the buds and if I was to cut back into here is why I say I go in there and I remove these Branch tips I create a bald spot it’s in there that is not going to fill back in it does not regenerate the new growth in there so if I’m looking sometimes at um you know Cyprus and junipers and Pines and Spruce if they get too big they get too large I cannot really go in and do this kind of renewal pruning so we see this all the time right gold mops it’s a beautiful hearty tough uh Jun Juniper cascading you know delicate foliage bright golden color they get bigger than you expect people plant them as a cute little plant that might be think it’s going to stay two or three feet tall it grows out next thing you know it’s eight or nine feet wide I cannot rejuvenate that if I have to reduce its size it’s just not capable coming back out on a broadleaf evergreen and this could be like Ho’s and Laurels um to some extent boxwoods and everything these they have buds all the way down this Branch buds buds Bud Buds and they’ll go all the way down so I can cut this back as far as I want to and it will resprout it will grow back through so good example these are berford Hol um real vigorous you know sturdy uh Chinese Holly that’s there uh they had uh this town American University on their campus they definitely know what they’re doing down there they had uh grown to be quite large um they were literally just kind of obstructing this Garden View obstructing this area and creating kind of a a dark creepy Place back here rather than a nice Serene walking kind of space so they made the decision on these old plants this wenten on this heavy renewal pruning they went in cut these things down to a height about 8 in right um You might take note there’s a stone in a little Japanese maple back there um you can see what happens of there’s my little Stone my little Japanese maple back in that corner you can see all these holes filling back in So on holes we can do this no problem you know they spond really well um and you you don’t have to be this drastic they could have cut it down to 12 inches 2 feet tall whatever you want but again these do really well with that if this was a juniper or something it would not do quite so well uh these are boxwood um what I have found so they’re broadleaf plants you would say hey I could do this heavy renewal pruning on them but this is a slower growing less vigorous plant um they don’t they just don’t have the same growth rate in Vigor like a Chinese Holly does so I’m very very hesitant to do that kind of renewal pring on boxwoods this is down um James Monroe’s home Mont piler and the boxwoods you know it’s old EST State um they’ve gotten large they’ve gotten overgrown uh they’re doing the best they can at managing this trying to sort of Shear them um along this to maintain that open walking space um I would be reluctant as they are I don’t want to go in and do this real heavy renewal pruning if I do and I’m also taking a chance of killing James Monroe boxwoods and I’m not going to do that I’m not going to be the guy um that carries that with me um so what they’re doing is um with boxwoods a lot of times we like to thin them out we might Tre create these gaps these holes these openings in there um and here they’re combining with some shearing to maintain that formality and doing the best we can managing their size so this would be a very good good example what I call thinning where we are going in here this is not quite so overgrown this is what we would like to do probably on an annual basis not let them get so big but go in this gives you an idea of how somebody’s going in thinning out these selective kind of branches that open up that canopy allow for better air water U air circulation within there more Leaf surface more photosynthetic Vigor just a whole lot of good things going and also maintaining that natural form um this is a um insularis boxwood uh little hedge in my front yard where I kind of went through and combined these techniques it doesn’t have to be one or the other all these holes these openings that you see in there I created those intentionally this hedge was growing out over the sidewalk and I wanted to push it back within bounds back behind the sidewalk that was my goal my intention I want to maintain a little bit of that formality that uniformity in there so I thin them then I Shear them um you start to see this is where I stuck my um phone down inside the plant I’m inducing more growth kind of Rejuvenation that’s in there it’s going to be helping to improve the health of the plant rejuvenate it um and then this you can see is that same hedge finished kind of product after it it’s grown back in there so one last um little picture I’m going to show you and then we’ll get to our questions I told you our needled Evergreens can’t really do this so if we’re trying to maintain them and maintain the size when these terminal buds start to Branch out what we call the candle season you can go in and tip these back so if you’re on a Christmas tree farm and you see these shear plants they’re growing for density they’ll go in with shears and literally just kind of cut these tips off so I might for different reasons decide I want to thin you know one or two of them out I might want to just cut the tips I might want to cut it here or here but the way we can maintain them is by limiting the expansion of these new candles that’s on there but if it gets too big just like on this Juniper and I cut back into this old growth where there is no develop that creates a bald spot that is not going to fill back in eventually this green growth will grow back out and Cascade over it will disguise it so again I’m not I don’t think there was any bad decisions made here but just you have to know that um when making your prudent decisions so this was a cool little plant that specimen plant that’s put in this is a dwarf blue spruce back here that you see this is a weeping Norway spruce and these two plants were grafted together and put on what we call Standard elevated up again the the owner just didn’t know what to do with this plant and just let it grow it got way too big and now it’s obstructing the view of the house and starting to come in the walk that kind of stuff so in this case again I I talked with our client we talked through all this and discussed it saying hey if I make this cut that’s it there’s no going back it’s not going to rejuvenate but my goal here again is I want to bring these into proportion the Weeping Spruce which is dominating the blue spruce portion I want to you know sort of subdue that I want to try to open it up so the blue spruce component can kind of become back more 5050 Balan like it was um and also bring its size down a little more in proportion with the area so we had pretty clear goals um understood there were kind of risks involved but just went for it um to me turned out surprisingly well uh you can see we brought the size of this down by at least a third maybe even more than that you see the blue spruce kind of creeping out here and then the idea is to gradually work on this to get it back into proportion over the next two or three years so this is where I will get rid of my pictures and we will take your um questions how are we doing Sally we’re doing well um let me just perfect let me scroll back up to the beginning um just a quick reminder for everybody if we don’t get to all of your questions today um you can always follow up with us David happy to take questions at the plant clinic or you can call your closest store uh and I will begin all right our first question is about aelas um the like the Bloons and the encor that bloom throughout the year um this person’s aelas are overgrown and need trimming back what is the best time to prune your aelas that bloom a few times during the year so they um they will respond really well to pruning you can bring them back I securely to whatever height shape size that you want to do with that I do prefer hand pruning you know that kind of selective thinning Style on but let’s wait and do that after their first set of Bloom so they typically put on a really big display of color in April enjoy that as soon as that April flowering is done then go in to do your pruning so what I was trying to do is kind of say hey this is kind of winter pruning if schedules work out my goal is to kind of do spring pruning and we will talk about how to manage his alas but but yes go for it but not yet um the flower buds on there today you’ve been waiting a long time so just hang in there a few more weeks enjoy the flowers and then uh then go for it whatever whatever height shape or size you choose okay all right next question how would you prune a Mahonia or a butterfly bush so we have two different plants there they are so um Mahonia I’m trying to think I consider more of a multi- stemed tree so if you could if you remember back to that diagram I didn’t have actual plant but it showed a diagram in multiple stems what will do on um Mahonia and this is also the way you would manage some of the more upright forms of Nandina as they grow grow and they get older they get leggy right they’re growing they’re growing and growing and one day you wake up and all the growth is up here at the tips and is kind of naked all the way down so at this time of year um you would actually go in and remove some of the oldest stems and by doing that if I remove one or two the oldest stems that induces the plant to start sending up New Growth so again the idea is it’s the best ways to make a habit of doing this you know around March of every year um go in there just take out some of the oldest stems and so we keep renewing the plant with new growth coming um back into it um so yeah little at a time and if you do this you know you’re constantly renewing the plant they maintain their natural shape and form U and looks great it’s easy all right tool question about tools um do you need to sharpen the pruning saw um I don’t think sharpening that pruning saw is really practical when I said sharpening Sal is a very very specialized of thing I don’t know how to do it there are people that sharpen saws but they’re extremely difficult to find um you’re better off just getting a new blade is my opinion so like I’m showing you felco um but this true with any of them uh in the little folding saws where I like they’re convenient but there’s just one little nut that’s in here it’s as easy as could be we sell replacing blades for the Falco Sals you just take that little nut out you slip a new blade in and you’re back in business um trying to find somebody would do the sharpening for you I’m just I don’t even know where I would I wouldn’t where to begin to look okay okay um next question how do you keep a gold mop um false Cyprus to a smaller size if they haven’t already gotten huge and I have to say that I’m reminiscing a bit but Sally believe or not I’m old enough to remember there were trucks that would go through the neighborhood it would actually do Saw Sharpening for you and some of oh really my age group or older might remember that but I think that’s all thing in the past up longer that way yeah but if I um yeah well that’s when we kept things we didn’t just throw them out uh so if I have plants like a gold mop Cyprus um I do this you know with um hokei Cypress what you you can prune them but you need to do what I’m going to call maintenance pruning again this is the perfect time of year to go out you can go out and cut tips off of there so if you look at a Cypress imagine this like you have one year growth you have twoyear growth your three-year-old growth is kind of bald and empty so I can prune out here at the tips I can prune when it’s green I just have to make sure that I prune some green tips so I can go in there with hand shears properly because I like their natural form do take some tips out of there do some thinning um and try to maintain them at a given size and that is very they respond beautifully to it where we get in trouble is if that plant becomes so overgrown and it’s so large that taking 4 in or 6 Ines off of it is not going to need get the job done I need to reduce it by two or three feet and that’s just not going to happen but yeah go out there um just with your hand shears do little tips pruning shaping um feel confident doing it just make sure you leave some green growth on there if you cut back in an old dead Branch um sometimes you might need to do that but you’re going to be left with an old dead Branch okay um here’s a question about boxwoods and I know you covered boxwoods but this is fairly specific okay so this person’s box was lost their rounded shape because the leaves at the center at the very top dried out presumably I’m assuming they must have died um how do I prune them to promote growth in that area of the plant are there any other rep measures you recommend uh so so this I don’t know how helpful this answer is going to be or not I found it depends a lot on what type of boxwood it is um mostly one I’m talking about is really the English boxwood like the old English boxwoods they’re very slow growing um those I’m a lot more cautious on how I prune them because again they just don’t have that kind of vigor they don’t respond as well if it happens to be some of these newer hybrid types something like Green Mountain or anything you can you can prune those pretty easily so you might want to bring pictures and samples in see if we can help you identify exactly which it it is but you can boxwoods you can thin them and you can Shear them if it’s one of these more vigorous varieties if it’s an English boxwood it’s just going to take a little bit of thinning tight Cuts stingy pruning um and over time and that this is a good time of year to be doing that I pruned my boxwoods two weeks ago so good to have an idea on which type of box would you have before moving forward is that yes yeah exactly that’s my kind of long- winded way of saying I I don’t really want to ask that question till we get the box we identified gotcha you try sending me pictures of it it’s best if we have pictures and samples at the plant C can see you in person okay all righty next question will a Japanese hly respond well if I give it a renewal pruning oh yeah yeah no they they are real easy that way that’s good um all right how to prune a magnolia that’s close to the house can we reduce the spread by cutting the Trunks laterally from the bottom um two things I want to say one is I keep saying oh yeah you can do that you can prune that no problem uh I’m going to have to put a little qualifier in there if like that Japanese hly if it’s in healthy vigorous good condition then the answer is yes sometimes people bring me plants that are sick they’re declining they’re in such compromised Health to begin with that I may say no because I don’t feel that plant has enough strength or Vigor to respond to pruning but in general yes um Magnolia I’m going to assume that we’re talking about a southern magnolia uh they do respond to pruning I’m trying to think through when you say did you say cuing like through the trunk yeah it said laterally hang on I haven’t had geometry in a while so laterally across right liking the sound of that too much laterally from the bottom of to reduce the idea is to reduce the spread of the tree so I’d be curious to see photos I’m saying that I’m just having trouble ening but I’m not gonna good at geometry or any of that so you you you can prune magnolious but I want to bring them from the tips back and that’s why I’m trying to understand the question a little bit so if it’s like this you know I can prune them back like that you’ll see some people even remove lower branches to kind of limb them up personally I don’t really like that so much uh and you’d want to um do that now um again I feel little better if we had a conversation at the clinic or send me an email on that to make sure I understand the question um of course when we’re doing that the plant’s going to respond by regenerating New Growth that’s in there and some of the Magnolias are huge and sometimes they’re just planted in the wrong space and still on like that so yeah I feel better seeing it in detail and hey S I think um Professor Larry’s doing a pruning shop work for us on Sunday too yeah and it is it’s full um see his hands on but if anybody if you’re signed up that’s great if you’re not you have questions for us please let us know because we are of course happy to help but yeah it’s full so just brought that up then if it’s full yeah sorry um alrighty I have a couple of comments for you that came in one person said uh for anybody who needs their tools sharpened we have a person who comes to the Vienna Farmers Market who will sharpen gardening tools reasonable um and another person who says remembers the trucks and they she says they did scissors and had a bell like the ice cream man so yes yeah we’re we’re probably about the same generation I have all fond memories of all that yeah ringing the bell and the ice cream truck yeah all right next question is it time to prune Bradford pair now yes um yes okay um I mean again I’m gonna say I really really like to do this stuff in um February but you know I I got the co and so yeah I know and I’m like well I still want to do this class but just you tried yeah we really we tried we thought we were G to make it back in but it’s okay you’re here now I’ve glad you’re better um all right next question what is the best pruning saw I really do like um I like Falco and whoa I I prefer the folding blade because when I’m pruning I can just take I can fold it up I can slip that in my back pocket and this thing is easily it’s got I think a um 6inch blade on it so the kind of pruning I’m doing it suits all my needs um if you’re working on larger trees though uh then you might need to step up to one has a little bit larger blade sensor come out a pruning saw the teeth go backwards I don’t know if you can maybe you can see it like this um so as you pull it cuts because the teeth are there these teeth are very wide and open so it’s meant for cutting Greenwood so it’s stick sticky um Greenwood it doesn’t clog up and it comes out of there so pruning saw is different from a carpenter saw um trying to use a carpenter saw on green wood um not much fun that’s good to know um but this is felco Corona makes an excellent one some people like commercial arst usually have they call a fixed blade it does doesn’t fold up but they’re using it on larger trees and everything I do like the convenience of a folding one okay uh next question can I prune my fig tree at four feet or I guess sounds like two four feet right now it’s six feet and it’s very hard to reach the figs which is sad you want to make sure you can reach all the figs can you do that um I’m I’m hesitating a little bit because I’m not I’m not the best with figs okay so so the thing is I know you can do it absolutely you can do it without hurting the tree the question really is there are flower buds on there now so in doing that you are going to diminish your Harvest figs a lot of times we get two seasons of harvest um and if I cut it now I’m taking my first crop off of there which is usually your best crop so if it’s really big and you’re willing to sacrifice some fruit this year I would say go for it and you that might just be the best thing to do the worst thing that will happen is it’ll cost you some figs okay big price to pay yes it is um alrighty Let’s see we got a couple more minutes here so we’ll see how many of these we can get through um is it too warm now to prune a whoa dogwood tree no I would just do it as soon as possible what happens my concern is I usually don’t like to prune in early spring because the sap is Flowing now and so sometimes when you make these Cuts particularly like Maples are going to be some of the worst Maples and Birch and Elm um some of these that we use this term bleeders you’re going to get sap flowing and oozing from there um you know that I I don’t I like to avoid that but sometimes you just that’s the way life is it happened we’re having this early spring so I would go for it um I don’t I wouldn’t hesitate I’ve never had this problem of bleeding on cousa Dogwood so I don’t have any hesitation again I was burning my cusa dogwood just two nights ago just okay try to get to as soon as you can okay um how far down near the ground do you prune red twig and yellow twig dogwood again this depends on the effect that you’re after some people um that want let’s say this let going use it as an example if you’re thinking more just I’m going to use almost like as a floral plant you can cut these down you know literally almost down to the ground down here to where it’s only a few inches tall just chop it off and you get this proliferation of new stems coming up and that essentially keeps all these bright red Twigs uh you can use it for nice floral arrangements and stuff but youve also change the form of plant if it’s a larger shrub and I’m using it more as what I’m going to call a landscape plant and I want larger size then I would do more that kind of thinning where I go in and I don’t cut the whole plants down but some of these branches I would thin them i’ cut them out to again induce more branches because it’s these young juvenile ones that give you the bright coloration in there so up at Longwood Gardens as an example they grow this where they cut it down every year every year comes up with these bright little stems but it never really achieves its full size if you want shrub form um you know just be a little more gentle on it all right let’s see it is 301 I’m gonna go ahead and take this last question that came in before that and then we will stop for the day sorry everybody um for butterfly bush should did you employ Rejuvenation pruning each year oh yeah I somebody did mention butterfly bush sorry I forgot yeah they they respond really well um also pruning if it’s some of the larger varieties and they’re getting big um at this time of year it’s the appropriate time you can go in and do a Rejuvenation pruning much like crepe myrtle they’ll Sprout back and they’ll still flower for you this summer so it doesn’t disturb their flowering um I will tell you again this is a lot of personal choice I keep saying not right or wrong if you want to do more of a thinning type of stuff where you just thin out branches reduce the height somewhat they respond to that really well also ultimately depends on what you want that plant to be in terms of size and shape but you really can’t hurt it okay alrighty well we have gone two minutes over so we’ll go ahead and conclude for today um again if anybody has any questions please feel free to follow up with us and the recording will be on our YouTube channel usually it’s about 24 hours so that will be available um David do you wna close out with any information um just tell you have fun with it plants are really really forgiving uh remember those pointers I said about trying not to injure the branch cers on there that’s really trees um shrubs you know we don’t think so much about that um but but have fun go out there experiment like I said plant forgiving I know there’s always like concern or alarm hey if you make a mistake you know they they’ll allow you to come back and fix it within a couple years or so so have fun with it experiment there’s no Rights and Wrongs on this alrighty well thank you so much it’s good to see you I’m glad you’re back in the office and everybody have have fun pruning have a good afternoon bye byebye