Pruning Tips from Expert Gardener | Pruning Do’s and Don’ts

What is the secret of beautiful and nicely looked plants and shrubs? Proper pruning is the key to have stunning looking plants and shrubs. Out of many gardening skills, pruning is one of the essentials. Following the perfect pruning Tips from Expert Gardener, you can give your trees an attractive look.

Now the next question is, what is the proper pruning process? Some trees require pruning during winter, and some require summer. It means, pruning at the right time is significantly essential.

This article will guide you through different pruning times of different trees and pruning do and don’ts. Before the subjected discussion, you will let you know what pruning is.

Let’s have a look.

What is Pruning?

Basically, it is a way of cutting away overgrown or mostly dead steams or brunches to promote healthy plant growth. 

But, you just can't even take a scissor or other necessary ingredients to cut the dead branches of shrubs or trees at any time, you have to cut down those things at the right time with some proper techniques, or else, you have to end up with weakened or damaged plants.

For practical reasons to make the tree safer, to encourage or limit the growth of certain areas, and to make the trees more aesthetically pleasing.

What are the types of pruning?

To master the technique of pruning, you need to know the type of pruning.  Here are the basic types of pruning that we perform.

• Deadwooding
• Thinning  
• Raise canopy 
• Canopy cleaning 

Deadwooding: Removal the dead, dying, sick, overcrowded, weakly attached, and low-strength branches from the crown of the tree. This is the most effective type of pruning and should be done regularly to keep your plants healthy and safe.

Thinning: It can cause wind and air to pass through the tree, reducing the risk of falling or breaking branches. Thinning opens the leaves of the tree, reduces the weight of the heavy limbs, and helps to keep the natural shape of the tree.

It allows sunlight to flow freely between plants and grass and wind branches below.

Raise canopy: RAISING cuts out the lower branches from a tree to produce clearance for buildings, vehicles, pedestrians, and vistas.
This will be done to grow trees above the walkway or driveway or to allow sunlight to reach the grass and trees under the trees.

Canopy cleaning: Reduction often reduces the size of the tree for utility line clearance. It is best to reduce the height or spread of the tree by cutting the leaders and branch terminals into pieces on the lateral branches (at least one-third of the cut stem diameter).

In addition to these, other types of prunings are not standard practices

Perfect pruning tips from expert gardener

Pruning, indeed, is one of the most challenging tasks. That's the reason why most get failed to prune their plants in the correct way. Don't worry; if you have enough knowledge and a piece of pole saw, you can accomplish this task in a breeze by yourself followed by the points below-

• What's the best time to prune trees?
• Deciduous Shrubs
• Deciduous Trees
• Fruit Trees
• Evergreen Shrubs
• Evergreen Trees
  

What's the best time to prune trees?  

Knowing the right time is one of the most necessary aspects of pruning. Because proper timing ensures productive, attractive, and healthy plants. To get the maximum benefit from it, you have to know pruning tips from an expert gardener with the right time of pruning that we will show you.

Deciduous Shrubs

When you have to prune deciduous shrubs, it depends on the plant's blooming time, growth, and health condition.

Forsythia and lilac are known as spring-flowering shrubs requiring extensive pruning to renew the plants. The ideal time of pruning these spring-flowered shrubs should be late winter or early spring to get maximum benefit.

Also, the summer-flowering shrubs, such as Japanese Spirea and Potentilla, should be prune to the late winter or early spring (March or early April) as well.

Note: Don't prune those deciduous shrubs in the summer if you want rapid growth of plants.

Deciduous Trees

In general, February to March is the ideal time to prune deciduous trees. At this time, you can find the absence of foliage. For this reason, you can get a clear view, allowing you to cut those dead or weak branches in a breeze!

But, this is not applicable for Oaks, as the best time of pruning oak trees is in the winter. Sooth to say, you won’t get any worse consequences if you start pruning these deciduous trees in other seasons. However, you should not prune these types of trees in the spring and fall, if possible.

In order to minimize the chance of an oak wilt infection, you should avoid pruning oak trees from March to October.

Fruit Trees

The pruning should be accomplished within the fruit trees start to break bud in the early spring. Late February to April is the ideal time, in that case.

Evergreen Shrubs

The ideal time of pruning evergreen shrubs should be in late March to early April. It can also be done in the mid-summer if you want light-pruning. Just make sure to avoid pruning in the time of late fall.

Evergreen Trees

Evergreen trees speak of to a plant that preserves their greenery in winter. Pine, Fir are evergreen trees, and they don’t require pruning frequently. Why? The shape of evergreen trees is distinct from other trees, which keeps them attractive without pruning.

Also, they have a sturdy central branch that requires less pruning only to control the height. Additionally, if you need to give any special shape to evergreen trees, you can prune them.

Pruning Do’s and Don’ts

Pruning is essential for tree health. It is true that pruning must obey some rules; otherwise, the tree may be damaged. You must have perfect tools for pruning; there are many tools such as pole saws, hand saw, replicating saws, etc.

However, if you use a replicating saw, you should select the right blade. If you are newbie, please read for more information Best Reciprocating Saw Blades for Pruning.   

Do:

• Maintain your plants throughout the month.
• Always try to consider the natural shape of the shrub.
• Ensure you have garments and some necessary pieces of equipment available.
• Focus on your trees after a storm so that you can know if there is pruning required.
• use perfect tools with the pruning blades.
  

Don't:

• Provide poor pruning, which can cause damage.
• Climb on a tree with the help of climbing spikes.
• Prune a tree when it is young, especially during the 1st year. Pick out a chainsaw while you're on a ladder.