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Backyard Gardening - Thinning and Pruning
Overview:
Backyard gardening is a lot of fun and
provides a lot of pleasure. Pruning and thinning
and doing it properly is extremely important factor
in having beautiful landscape shrubs and plants.
Most home backyard gardeners have a difficult time
bringing themselves to prune their plants as they
should be pruned. In addition, most people don’t
understand the mechanics of pruning.
Landscaping shrubs and plants primarily have two
kinds of buds or branches, terminal and lateral.
The terminal buds are the buds located at the tip
of the branches. Lateral buds are located along the
branch or on the sides of the branch.
If you are growing evergreen shrubs or deciduous
flowering shrubs it is extremely important that
these terminal buds be cut on a regular basis in
order for the plant to fill out properly. (A
deciduous plant is a plant that is not an
evergreen. Deciduous shrubs lose their leaves
during the winter months.) A shrub that has been
properly pruned will be tight, and full. You cannot
see through a properly pruned plant. If you do not
cut off the terminal bud, the plant just keeps
growing in an outward direction with very little
development taking place inside the plant.
If you clip that terminal buds, the plant usually
sets three or more new buds just below the cut.
Allow these buds to develop and grow about four or
five inches and cut them again. Keep this process
going until the plant has reached the size you
want. This will assure you of a much nicer and
fuller plant.
The best time to prune landscape plants is
when they
need it. It does not harm plants to be
pruned during the growing season. If you wait until
fall to do your pruning, the plant will have grown
considerably more and most of that growth will have
to been pruned away.
If you clip that terminal bud during the growing
season, the plant will set three more buds within a
matter of a few weeks. These buds will begin to
grow and the plant can be pruned again before the
end of the growing season or after the season.
If you plant a shrub in the spring with three
terminal branches and don’t prune it at all you
will have a very tall shrub at the end of the
season with only a few branches. If you prune that
shrub at the time of planting and at least once
more during the growing season you will end up with
a smaller shrub but it will be much fuller.
Tree pruning rules are different. Leave tree
terminal buds intact until the tree has reached the
height where you would like the branches to start.
Just let the tree grow straight up like a whip
until it reaches a height of about five feet. Then
cut the top of the tree off where you would like
the branches to start. As the head of the tree
begins to develop prune it much the same as you
would for shrubs.
This young tree will have leaves and small branches
developing along the lower portion of the stem.
Leave these on the stem until the tree has
developed a small head. The plant needs these
leaves for food development.
Once the tree has established a small head remove
any leaves or branches along the stem of the tree.
Keep pruning the terminal buds on the branches of
the tree, in order to form a tree with a tight
compact head. The ideal time to trim most other plants is late fall or early spring, but anytime is better than not at all. Your backyard gardening efforts will produce great results with proper thinning and pruning of your shrubs, plants and trees. Related articles:
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