Before the good weather leaves, get your pruning done

You may think you’re all done with gardening for the year if you’ve pulled the weeds from the vegetable garden, cut down the tall perennials and cleaned up the leaves on the lawn. I haven’t done so, but congratulations if you have. There is still work to do outside while the nice weather holds: This is a good time to do some pruning on your shrubs and hardwood trees.

Many good gardeners like pruning only slightly more than preparing Federal Tax Form 1040. I guess their aversion is due to an anthropomorphic view of pruning: They feel that taking off limbs of trees is like amputating an arm or leg. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that pruning is absolute: Once removed, a branch cannot be reattached.

Trees and shrubs thrive when pruned. They do better when the clutter of too many small branches is reduced. Taking out branches opens up trees, allowing sunshine to reach the surface of every leaf; it also allows breezes to dry wet leaves, minimizing the chance of fungal diseases. Don’t be afraid to take big branches: removing one bigger branch is generally better than taking six small ones.

Let’s look at shrubs. You need to decide how your shrub should look and how big it should be. So, for example, rhododendrons are often planted in front of the house, but then get so big they cut off the light coming in the windows. Lilacs and forsythia can send up many branches from the ground, forming an impenetrable mass with no recognizable shape. This is not acceptable to me.

Start by taking a good look at a shrub before cutting any branches. Walk all the way around it. Sit down on the ground near the base, and look up through it. Look for branches that are dead, and remove them first. If you are unsure if it is alive or dead (because there are no leaves on a branch at this season), scratch the bark with your thumbnail. If you see a green tinge, it is alive.

Next, remove any branches that have no future. Is a branch growing into the center of the bush, or rubbing against other branches? If so, off it must come. But don’t cut it off in a way that leaves an ugly stub. Follow the branch back, and remove the entire thing. If it is shooting up from the ground, cut it off at ground level.

Unless you have a hedge that you want to be flat-topped and regular, you should not reduce the height of a shrub by just giving it a buzz cut with electric hedge shears. Generally, doing so will result in lots of new growth next spring – often, three to five new stems starting up from each cut tip. Not only that, you will leave bare ugly stubs showing.

To reduce the height of a shrub, remove some of the oldest, thickest stems first. They are the least vigorous and generally the least healthy. You can cut some of them all the way to the ground. Others you should prune back to where they join another branch – even a small branch that can replace it eventually. Stagger your cuts to give a layered look, the way your hairdresser may do for you. By this, I mean follow tall stems back to a Y or V, and remove one side of the fork – but making cuts at different heights.

Prune not only for plant health, but beauty. Make your shrubs pleasing to the eye. An un-pruned forsythia is as messy as a teenager’s bedroom, but it is a thing of beauty if pruned to a lovely vase shape with cascading branches. Remember that pruning for looks also opens up the tree or shrub, allowing it to reach its full potential.

Don’t be bashful when pruning. As Bill Lord, the pruning guru at University of New Hampshire Extension, likes to point out, if you take off a branch in an “oops” maneuver, another will grow back to replace it. Just don’t remove more than 20 percent to 25 percent of the wood of a tree or shrub in any given year.

This is also a good time to remove root suckers. These are straight young stems that pop up from the ground around trees, often from the root stock of grafted trees. Crabapples and apples are all grown on roots that determine the ultimate size of the tree. Dwarf trees have one type of root, semi-dwarf or full-sized trees have others. The roots are not the same variety as the top of the tree and would not produce nice fruit even if you let the root suckers get huge. Cut these suckers off close to the ground to keep the tree looking tidy.

If you prune spring-blooming plants now, you’ll lose some blossoms. Apples, lilacs, forsythia – any tree or shrub that blooms before the Fourth of July generally produces buds the summer before. But so what? You aren’t overly busy right now, so go get the work done. I love to look out my window in winter and see perfectly pruned apple trees. I think of pruning as sculpting my landscape.

Henry Homeyer is a gardener and writer. Contact him at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746, or by visiting his Web site, www.Gardening-Guy.com.