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Tree Pruning Tips
by Michael J. McGroarty -
www.freeplants.com
There are two kinds of winter gardening. The first method
usually starts in January as the gardening catalogs begin to
arrive in the mail. This type of gardening is as easy and
sitting in your favorite chair, browsing the catalogs, and
either dreaming about what you're going to do this spring,
or actually drawing designs for the gardens you intend to
work on.
The second type of winter gardening is to actually get out
in the yard and do a little work. Of course if it's bitter
cold, you'd be better off waiting for a good day. Winter is
a good time to do some pruning if the temperatures are
around 30 degrees or so. I don't recommend pruning if it's
considerably below freezing because the wood is brittle and
will shatter when you make a cut.
One of the advantages of pruning during the winter is that
you can see much better what needs to be cut out and what
should stay. At least that's true with deciduous plants. The
other advantage is that the plants are dormant, and won't
mind you doing a little work on them.
Ornamental trees should pruned to remove competing branches.
Weeping Cherries, Flowering Dogwoods, Flowering Crabapples
etc. have a tendency to send branches in many different
directions. It is your job to decide how you want the plant
to look, and then start pruning to achieve that look.
But first stick your head inside the tree and see what you
can eliminate from there. This is like looking under the
hood, and when you do you'll see a lot of small branches
that have been starved of sunlight, that certainly don't add
anything to the plant, they are just there, and should be
cut out. Any branch that is growing toward the center of the
tree where it will get little sunlight should be cut out.
Where there are two branches that are crossing, one of them
should be eliminated. Once you get the inside of the plant
cleaned up, you can start shaping the outside.
Shaping the outside is actually quite easy. Just picture how
you want the plant to look, and picture imaginary lines of
the finished outline of the plant. Cut off anything that is
outside of these imaginary lines. It is also important to
cut the tips of branches that have not yet reached these
imaginary lines in order to force the plant to fill out.
For the most part plants have two kinds of growth. Terminal
branches and lateral branches. Each branch has one terminal
bud at the very end, and many lateral branches along the
sides. The terminal buds grow in an outward direction away
from the plant. Left uncut they just keep growing in the
same direction, and the plant grows tall and very thin.
That's why the trees in the woods are so thin and not very
attractive.
When you cut a branch on a plant, the plant sets new buds
just below where you cut. When you remove the terminal bud
the plant will set multiple buds, this is how you make a
plant nice and full. Don't be afraid to trim your plants,
they will be much nicer because of it. The more you trim
them, the fuller they become.
Lots of people have a real problem with this. They just
can't bring themselves to prune. Especially when it comes to
plants like Japanese Red Maples. It kills them to even think
about pruning a plant like this. Just do it! You'll have a
beautiful plant because of it.
Look at the plant objectively. If you see a branch that
looks like it's growing to far in the wrong direction, cut
it. If you make a mistake it will grow back. Not pruning is
the only mistake you can make. I hope this helps and doesn't
get you in trouble with your significant other. Many a
family feud has started over pruning.
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit
his most
interesting website,
www.freeplants.com and sign up for his excellent
gardening newsletter, and grab a FREE copy of his
E-book, "Easy Plant Propagation" |
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>> Gardening Articles
by
Michael J. McGroarty
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