How and when to Prune Your Plants

When you have plants you should know that pruning is important, but most plant owners do not prune due to lack of knowledge on when and how to prune. Pruning your plants can be easy, and when you know how to properly prune your plants you will leave them looking beautiful. Here is a guide to pruning five popular plants.

Rose Bushes:

The good thing about pruning rose bushes is that it's very hard to kill a rose bush by over pruning it. If you have never pruned a plant before, roses are a great place to start. Even if you over prune rose bushes they will fill in and grow back quickly. Pruning rose bushes will help shape your bush, it will also help your bush produce more flowers and flourish.

To start pruning rose bushes you will want long handled loppers. Start at the base of the bush, and make cuts at 45 degree angles. If you have cane borers in your area you are going to want to protect the cut, you can do this easily by putting white glue on the tip of the cut. When you cut, get rid of any dead wood, or any suckers that are growing. You want to prune roses at the end of the dormant season, right before they begin to flower in spring.

Evergreen Trees:

These are great because they don't require a lot of pruning. But pruning can be very helpful if you want to control how your tree is growing and control its size or fullness. If you want to keep your tree compact, you need to cut the candles, or the branches with the new growth, half way back. You want to do the cutting when the new growth starts to occur, this usually happens between March and May depending on where you live. If you are not trying to keep your tree more compact you won't need to do much pruning except to get rid of dead branches.

Deciduous Flower Shrubs:

The most common thing you need to do in pruning flower shrubs is to keep it thinned out, so that the plant continues to grow properly and flowers. You want to prune these plants in late winter or early spring, but you want to make sure you prune them before they begin to bud.

Raspberry & Blackberry Plants:

These are called brambles. These bushes spread by suckers, and if you don't prune these back they will take over. When a bramble plant gets too large with too many suckers it actually starts to produce less fruit, and will start to die off. You want to try and keep your raspberry bushes in a row, with a 12-18 inch footprint. You will prune back any suckers that grow outside this footprint. You want to prune any dead or cracking branches. You also want to prune back any branches that bore fruit last year, they will not bear fruit again. You want to prune your bushes in late winter or early spring, before the bud breaks.

Hydrangeas:

These can be difficult to prune, because you need to know exactly what kind of hydrangea you have. If you have a lot of hydrangeas it can be worth it to invest in a book on pruning them. This book will give you all the specifics on when exactly to prune each exact type. The most common type of hydrangea does not need to be pruned all the way to the ground. The common type of hydrangea needs to be pruned lightly in late winter or early spring to encourage more flower buds.