Judging from the calls on the radio (“The Garden Clinic”,
Saturdays from noon to 1:00 on WTMA) many people are thinking about doing some
pruning.
Pruning in August gets a little tricky, if you are pruning
plants that you grow to enjoy their flowers. If a podocarpus, ligustrum,
pittosporum or a plant that is grown for foliage not flowers is blocking your
walk or driveway, go ahead and prune. The tricky part is camellias and azaleas.
Do I prune them?
For the most part camellias have set their flower buds for
the fall and azaleas have set their buds for the spring, so you would not want
to prune them. However, if you have to do some light pruning for safety or a
limb is being a nuisance, go ahead and prune realizing that you might be
removing some of your flowers.
A general rule of thumb that has served me well throughout
the years is to prune a plant or a fruit bearing tree or shrub right after it
flowers or fruits. Of course, there are a few exceptions. Say your camellias
and azaleas finish blooming in May, prune heavy enough that they will not need
pruning again until next year. If these plants need constant pruning, you may
consider transplanting them to another area of the yard that has more room. A
general date that would vary with variety is to have all your azaleas pruned by
the Fourth of July.
The tricky ones are the plants that bloom on 2 year old wood.
Hydrangeas and bananas are the most common plants around here that bloom on 2
year old wood, so you can not remove all the wood to the ground every year or
you will not have flowers. In the case of bananas, you have to protect that
wood from freezing so they will flower and produce bananas. There is a new
variety of hydrangea that blooms on new wood.
When pruning, try to reach into the middle of the plant and
open it up. Take some of the oldest
canes down to the base of the plant so it can send out young new shoots from
the bottom. Remove any wood that looks
old and unproductive. Remove any rubbing,
sick or diseased looking limbs. Encouraging growth from the middle will also
reduce lichen growth. If you have a lot of diseased limbs, consider sterilizing
your pruners with a 1% mix of bleach.
Try not to remove more than 25% of the total plant at one
time. If it is an eight foot plant,
don’t hedge it off down to six feet and figure you have removed 25% of the
plant. It is best to use hand pruners
and make your pruning cuts where another branch is coming off the limb that you
are cutting. Don’t make cuts along the
stem where there is not a branch coming out or you will get two limbs coming
out at this point and will create the “shell effect” if done repeatedly.
The “shell effect” is when you have a veneer of green
foliage on the outside of the plant and the middle of the plant has no foliage
at all. This “shell effect” does not
allow light and air movement inside the plant making it a haven for disease and
insects. A plant should have layers of
green foliage from the top to the bottom, inside the plant and out.
When you are pruning your azaleas or any other plant at this
time of year, make sure you have plenty of mulch and maintain adequate moisture
by a good watering schedule. When you
prune the plant, you will be removing leaves that were shading the ground and
the root system of the plant will be much hotter, causing it to dry out
faster.
Fleas? Yellowing grass? Sick plants? Keep reading the “Horticulture
Hotline”!
