Time to start pruning!

Pamela Corle-Bennett is the state master gardener volunteer coordinator and horticulture educator for Ohio State University Extension. Contact her by email at bennett.27@osu.edu.

If you haven’t already started, it’s time to start pruning your landscape plants!

Before you make that first cut, make sure your pruning tools are nice and sharp! Each time you make a cut, you are essentially injuring the plant. A nice sharp, clean cut helps to ensure that the wound heals properly.

In addition, make sure you determine your end goal when pruning. Take a look at the plant and figure out what you want to achieve through pruning.

In some cases you might just want to limb up or remove lower limbs so that it’s easier to mow around.

In others you may want to thin the inner branches top open the tree up to sun and air circulation. This is particularly important with fruit trees.

It’s also important with any tree that has a branch structure with really narrow branch crotch angles. The crotch angle is where two branches come together.

Trees such as elms, zelkova and callery pears all benefit from this.

As these types of trees grow, the crotch angles grow together which ends up with what is called occluded bark. This area becomes weak and is very susceptible to breaking.

With these trees you try to attempt to remove branches in order to thin out and prevent this from occurring. This is not an easy task as this is how these trees grow.

Once you have determined your end goal for the plant, stand back and take a look. The first few cuts should consist of broken and damaged branches, branches that are crossing and rubbing or growing toward the center of the plant, and any branches that are in the way of the traffic patterns.

After you make these cuts, any final cuts would be to shape up the plant.

Rejuvenation pruning is a great technique for fast-growing overgrown deciduous shrubs such as forsythia, flowering plum, dogwood (shrub), and many others.

Rejuvenation pruning is done in the spring, prior to any new growth. Simply cut all of the branches back to just above the base of the plant.

Some plants can be cut all the way back to the ground if the branches emerge from the ground and not a crown. The crown is at the base of the plant and is where all new growth emerges.

Deciduous shrubs store their energy and sugars in the root system for the winter. Therefore, if they are cut back to the ground before new growth emerges in the spring, all of that energy will be put into a new plant.

When it comes to evergreen shrubs, don’t use rejuvenation pruning. It will take an extreme amount of time for these plants to generate new growth since their sugars and energy is stored in the foliage.

When pruning trees, be sure to make good cuts that are not flush to the trunk nor do you leave stubs. Make the cut at the branch bark collar. This is the area where there is a small ring around the branch just before it meets the trunk. It’s the area where there will be the best sealing of the wound.

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