Cleaning Up The Shrubbery

Sweetie is back up by popular demand.

I used to be a believer that trees and shrubs knew how they were supposed to grow and we should just leave them be, but I’ve since realized we can make them healthier, prettier, and more productive by properly pruning them. My problem is I always wait until past the proper time or don’t feel like doing it, so they get out of control and require more than just pruning. In general, the proper time to prune is just after blooming for spring bloomers and late winter for summer bloomers. The problem is that for major work on spring bloomers if you do it at the proper time, there is so much foliage, it’s almost impossible for a major rejuvenation, so late winter is best.

For these first things I did, three weeks ago would have been better, but I think they’ll be okay. The Butterfly Bush just needs to be cut almost to the ground in late winter every couple of years. I forgot the before shot, but here’s the debris pile and what’s left.

The Snowball had never been pruned and required a lot of work. After this, it will be easier to keep up by pruning.

The Weigela needs pruning every year by removing the 3 year old (or older) branches, and leaving the younger vertical ones. It’s been closer to 5 years for this one.

These Rose Of Sharons have never been pruned and have grown completely out of control plus suffered some severe snow damage – to the point I couldn’t mow around them. I just picked a mental inverted cone size for them and cut off everything outside the cone.  Here are the yet to be done and the finished ones - you've got to be ruthless.

I did these plus my fruit trees, ornamental trees, crepe myrtles, knockout roses, and a few others. I’ll tackle the Azaleas after they bloom.  This will be a major effort and will take a few years to get them in good shape as evergrenns should not have more than 30% of their foliage removed in one growing season.

When pruning, it’s always important to use proper techniques – cutting out the dead, cutting back to branches or nodes, cutting off branches just at the outside of the collar, etc.  If you question whether you're rejuvinating or pruning - I never prune with a chainsaw :-).

A few days ago I was bemoaning being on negative news overload.  I watched CBS 60 minutes last night and it was a real feel good to learn about Bob Hurley, the 30 year basketball coach at St. Anthony's High School in Jersey City.  This guy has passed up bigger opportunities for his $9000 a year job where he turns out national championship basketball teams on a regular basis at a school with no gym and he has had only 2 players not go to college in his career.  Talk about impacting kids lives - this guy is a real hero and I'm glad I was watching to learn about him.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry