Things To Remember When Pruning Your Plants

If you have a garden, then you should know that pruning your plants is an essential part of garden maintenance. All your perennial bushes, hedges, and trees require snipping and clearing to ensure they grow abundantly and in their desired shape. While pruning isn’t a particularly challenging chore, there are a lot of factors at play that you must consider before picking up your clippers.

Before pruning your plants, know the best time of year to trim them. Winter is often ideal, but it can vary based on the plant. Use the right tools for each pruning task, and ensure they are clean and sharp. Remove dead and diseased branches, and ensure there is ample airflow and sunlight in each plant after pruning. Remember to always cut above a node when pruning.

Pruning your plants helps keep the nutrients and energy focused on the healthiest part of the plant. It can also stimulate new growth, including lots of flowers and fruit. While trimming is easy in theory, there are right and wrong ways to prune your plants. If you are still perfecting the art of garden maintenance, then keep reading to learn all the tips you must remember when pruning plants in your garden.

12 Tips To Remember When Pruning Your Plants

1. Select The Correct Tools For The Job

When you trim your plants, there are all sorts of garden tools you can use. There are tiny snippers and clippers for trimming thin stems and branches, and electric hedge trimmers for large hedges, bushes, and leafy trees.

When pruning, you should select the right tool for the job. You want your cuts to be correct and precise, as this will keep your plant healthy. You also don’t want to spend countless hours trimming a single plant. Choose the tools that will prune your plant effectively and efficiently.

2. Use Sharp Tools

In addition to choosing the right tools for the job, you also need very sharp ones. When you intentionally trim plants, you want the cuts to be precise and clean. If using dull blades, you can damage the branches, and sometimes even cause rips and bruising to the plant.

Dull tools can cause more harm than good. If you have a sloppy cut, it is harder for your plant to recover. It also opens up the plant to pests and disease. Ensure your garden tools are sharpened before embarking on seasonal trimming.

3. Cleaning Your Garden Tools Before And After Use

Another important tip to remember when pruning is that you should always keep your tools clean. Disease, mold, and pests can all spread easily on gardening tools. This is particularly true when you are cutting into several plants around your yard.

Wash your garden tools with warm, soapy water before and after you trim plants. This will keep them free of pests and diseases. It will also keep them looking new and working great for longer.

4. Remove All Dead And Diseased Growth 

When pruning, you should always remember to look for the three D’s — disease, dead branches, and damaged sections. While shaping and creating airflow are important, the primary job when pruning a plant is to get rid of parts that don’t belong.

Take a close look at the plant and remove any cracked or damaged branches. Anything dead or dying should also be removed. Take a closer look at the plant and see if you can spot powdery or soft spots indicative of disease. You want to remove any part of the plant that might be diseased, so it doesn’t spread further.

5. Deadhead Your Plants Periodically

If you are new to pruning and don’t want to stress your plants out too much all at once, start by periodically deadheading your plants. Deadheading is the process of removing dead flowers, fruits, and leaves from your plants with your clippers. You can do this type of pruning in the summer.

This is good practice for those new to pruning, as it helps you learn how and where to cut the stems and causes minimal stress on the plant. It also makes the bush or tree look cleaner and promotes new growth.

6. Remember the One-Third Rule When Pruning

If you aren’t sure whether you have pruned too much or too little, you think about the one-third rule. This rule refers to the fact that you should never remove more than one-third of the total plant when pruning it.

Plants can usually bounce back easily if you prune one-third or less of the plant. Pruning more than this, however, can shock and stunt the plant. It can kill the plant in extreme cases, but otherwise it is likely to result in much slower growth.

7. Choose The Right Time To Prune

There are right and wrong times to prune. You don’t usually want to prune as plants are growing and starting to flower. It can interrupt their growth, and inhibit flowering. This means you shouldn’t prune in the spring and summer. 

Instead, the best time to prune your plants is usually late winter, when the plants are still dormant but nearing a time of growth. Some plants can be cut back in the fall. Keep in mind that pruning in the fall may stimulate new growth right before your plants go dormant, which is not ideal.

8. Don’t Overprune New Plants

Consider the age of your plant before you start pruning it. Older and well-established trees and bushes can take more extreme pruning than newer plants. If you just planted a bush or tree in the last year or two, take it easy, and only trim dead and damaged branches, and perhaps do a bit of shaping.

As your plant gets larger and stronger, it can handle more trimming. This works out well, as older plants are usually the ones that need more pruning anyway.

9. Cut Just Above A Node

When trimming branches on a tree or bush, remember that where you snip matters. You always want to cut just above a node. The node is where an offshoot meets the main branch. Cutting just beyond a node will help stimulate new growth in the right places. 

Cutting haphazardly can result in leaving plants susceptible to disease, and it can send vital nutrients to a wasted dead end of the stem.

10. Prune To Promote Sunlight And Airflow In Larger Plants

In addition to removing dead and diseased branches, another goal of pruning is to promote airflow and allow sunlight in. Airflow is a great way to reduce the risk of mold, pests, and disease. 

You also must remember that the entire plant wants sun, not just the top leaves. Therefore, you should trim new offshoots that block a lot of light and airflow, even if they are healthy. This will help promote the overall health and productivity of the bush or plant, especially trees that fruit and flower.

11. Prune The Tips For A Wider And Bushier Plant

If your plant is growing too tall and you want it to be wider, then you should prune the tips. Pruning the tips sends a message to the plant to start sending offshoots in different directions. Trimming the tips of a bush can help give you a more dense and bushy plant within a year or two if you are diligent. 

12. Different Plants Like Different Amounts Of Pruning

While there are rules like “the three D’s” and the “one-third rule,” you must remember that some plants require different amounts of pruning than others. Rose bushes and many fast-growing vines, for example, benefit from a lot of pruning each year.

Some slower-growing perennials, like the flowering lilac, forsythia, and azalea bushes, all prefer only necessary pruning. Ensure you know how much your plant likes to be pruned before you reach for your clippers.

Final Notes On What To Remember When Pruning Plants

Pruning trees and perennials is essential to ensure continued growth in the right direction. There are, however, some rules and tips to remember when you prune your plants. Remember, your goal is to remove all dead, diseased, and damaged parts of the plant. 

You should also try to add more airflow and allow more sunlight to the plant. Plants like to be pruned at different times of the year, but late winter is often a good time for many plants. Always use sharp and clean tools when pruning to reduce the risk of spreading disease or damaging the plant.

Related Guides:

• When To Trim And Shape Boxwoods (And How To Do It!)
• How To Prune A Fig Tree (Quickly & Easily By Season!)
• What Perennials To Cut Back In The Fall