Bits about Pruning Trees and Shrubs

Your garden consists of more than just flowers that adorn the landscape, your gardens most likely consist also of trees, shrubs, vines, and fruit. What are some of the vines and shrubs that need pruned? A grape vine will need pruned to keep its shape and to keep it growing over the arbor that you have created. A forsythia bush will reach wildly to the sky unless you trim it back a bit and keep it in shape.

Keeping bushes, shrubs, trees and vines healthy, you will need to prune them back a bit over the course of the early spring and late fall months so that they will be healthy and continue to grow in your gardens.

What is pruning really? Pruning is the cutting back or the cutting away of parts of the plant that you don’t want, that have died off, or that are growing where they shouldn’t be growing. Pruning is also a function that you will perform to help the plant concentrate on producing more fruit, more flower or in the shape that you desire most.

Nature will compete pruning on its own but in its own time. Nature prunes trees with the wind, snow, ice and droughts during the years. Natural pruning is also completed when two branches continue to rub together causing one or both branches to die off.

What will you need to correctly prune your trees, shrubs or vines?
You will need a sharp pair of pruners. These vary in length depending if you are going to be pruning a rose bush that is close to the ground, a vine that is reaching up the side of the arbor, and even higher yet, fruit trees that are over ten feet tall. Special pruners are made for different needs; for example, there are special motor driven pruners for evergreen bushes that need shaped by cutting back an extensive number of branches.

You will need to learn more about your plants particular needs and when is the best season to cut back or prune this plant. You don’t want to prune when a plant is coming into blossom because you will be cutting away the potential fruit, just as you won’t want to put additional stress on plants, by pruning them in the middle of a drought. Read more about the types of plants that you have that need a little pruning before just going out and cutting.