Hit the Dirt; Pruning Shrubs

Hi there. This is his letter and my name is Claire Ackroyd to sort of conclude series on pruning here. Talk a little bit about pruning shrubs shrubs maybe deciduous flowering shrubs which includes roses which is really another whole subject evergreens. And either one of those might be used in hedges so we'll see if we can get a little bit of information on all three of those categories flooring shrubs the first thing you need to understand about flowering shrubs is when they bloom this is an important bit of sort of plant physiology that is essential to pruning them think of forsythia and Mark orange as two good examples of shrubs that bloom on one year old growth. They grow shoot one year and the following set up the flower buds. Before the end of the year and then the Flobots are sitting there already to come out and they come out the following spring. Growth is now one year old. And then there are some other plants that bloom on the current year's growth the best one to think about there is hydrangea sends up a shoot boom flour on the end. The whole thing is completed in one year so the plants that bloom on the first one year old

growth. The best way to prune them is to remove the flowered shoots when they finish flowering. When you for cities all done blooming and I'll be surprised if there's much for Scythia to bloom this year after the bad winter but when flowering shrubs are done blooming in the spring you remove the old growth which is now almost useless that encourage it to grow some nice new shoots on which it will flower the following year. Pretty simple. You can tip back the long shoots if your plant is a little bit too big you can start to slip them back a little bit to keep it within bounds but basically are not expected to do a whole lot more than remove some of the older growth every year and then the other kind is the ones that bloom on their current year's growth hybrid tea roses. Good example. That's why it's OK to cut hybrid tea roses down hard in the spring because they're going to bloom on everything they make this year. The more you cut them back the more growth I make this year the more they will bloom you don't need all of last year's growth is just in the way. So those are the two basic deciduous shrub types for. Pruning one of the more common problems is not that that's a sort of

annual maintenance type pruning you might be doing more common problem is big overgrown shrubs sort of got tangled and out of control and how to get them back into shape. And about there's a sort of one doing a one don't on this don't share them back the wrong thing to do to make it a big old shrub. A smaller nicer Shrub because out of shear it evenly all over top it. Tippett back what you want to do is to get into the middle of it and remove a lot of the old growth a renewal pruning technique. It lightens up the plant. It's now a sort of less dense less ugly mass of stuff. Old Market oranges are typical of what you want to get in and log some of the old growth and then you can tidy up its outline as well. But you're basically stuck with a big plant if you've got a big plant it will always be a big plant. But if you take some of the old growth you've got a healthy vigorous rejuvenating big plant instead of a big ugly tangled one. Talking about Hedges is an important thing. Deciduous hedges are great

underused they're cheaper easier to grow and there's lots of nice plants that make very good hedges. Nine bark I don't know if anybody knows that I've talked about hedges before rugosa roses and so on. They can be shared back more or less as and when you want to but every time you cut back something like Privett it will from the point where it's caught it will generate a whole bunch of new little growths and you cut it again it generates another whole bunch and you get this sort of witch's brew me effect at the end. The outside edge of the hedge which is very unsightly and doesn't create a nice hedge it gets top heavy and awkward. So what you want to do with the deciduous hedge is to cut it back way below the old pruning cuts every other year maybe every year cut it down hard occasionally to get some good new growth coming up. Evergreen Hedges You can shear them at any time of the year really there's a lot of myth about the wrong time to shear but the only thing you want to avoid is clipping them hard. Late enough in the summer they will generate new growth that is not

hardy by the time winter comes. If only giving them a little sort of buzz cut it doesn't really matter when you do it. The best thing to know about evergreens do big things to avoid. Don't shear use for hedges evergreens that don't respond well to shearing and otherwise evergreens that can't regenerate well. Think of a cedar you can cut into a cedar and it regenerates a whole bunch of new growth. You cut hard into a pine and that branch dies. So cedar makes a good hedge. Pine doesn't. And then the important thing especially in northern climates remember bottle height is to keep them sort of pyramid L-shaped narrow at the top of the bottom. She has them so that when they get snow load on them especially they don't have top heavy shapes that fall over and break. Well they're some of the highlights of Shrub pruning Good luck with your pruning shears and I'll talk to you again in a week.