Pruning Trees and Shrubs: Part 2
Pruning Trees
🍁Pruning Deciduous Trees
Young deciduous trees require formative pruning. This helps them develop a naturally beautiful shape over the years, with branches spreading at an appropriate angle, preventing them from breaking under the weight of snow in winter. Older deciduous trees, while in need of maintenance pruning, thinning, and corrective pruning, poorly tolerate it due to slow-healing wounds. Such wounds may take years to heal. The tree utilizes most of its stored nutrients to rebuild lost bark sections, resulting in weakened resistance and susceptibility to diseases or damage. To aid in tree regeneration, the use of the Bros' gardening ointment, Koroderma, is recommended. Apply it to the wounds after pruning, forming a durable and elastic coating resistant to weathering, protecting the damaged areas from fungi and bacteria, and preventing drying and moisture, while speeding up wound healing.
🩹How to apply the ointment on pruning wounds?
Clean the tree where the wound occurred after pruning.
Apply the ointment evenly on the wound's surface and 2 cm beyond its edges.
Forming the crown of deciduous trees is a procedure that can be performed throughout the year, although it is best to plan such work between November and March. An exception is the so-called "weeping" trees (maple, hornbeam, birch), whose crowns are pruned in summer. The prevailing sunny weather, prolonged positive temperatures, and the absence of frost during this period favor the healing of pruning wounds.
🌲Pruning Evergreen Trees
Evergreen trees require only sanitary pruning, removing damaged or diseased branches. Shaping the crown of evergreen trees is unnecessary as they maintain their natural shape as they grow.
🍐Pruning Fruit Trees
Apple and pear trees can be pruned before the start of the growing season, in early spring (February-March). Plums, apricots, peaches, nectarines are ready for rejuvenating and corrective pruning in early April. Cherries should only be pruned in summer. Unpruned fruit trees quickly become dense, making harvesting difficult. A large number of shoots, in the form of small branches, will result in smaller and lower-quality yields in the following years.
✂️Pruning Shrubs
Deciduous and evergreen seedlings with bare roots (sold in pots) generally do not require seasonal pruning if they were neatly pruned in the nursery. For shrubs with exposed roots, seasonal pruning is essential for maintenance. It aims to balance the disproportion between the small underground part – the roots, significantly reduced during excavation in the nursery – and the overgrown above-ground part.
Pruning Deciduous Shrubs
Prune deciduous shrubs flowering on last year's growth, such as forsythia, bush honeysuckle, almond, Daphne, lilac, and mezereon, annually from late February to mid-April. This should be done during the green, but not yet fully opened bud stage, when daytime air temperatures are above 0 degrees Celsius, and nighttime temperatures drop to a maximum of -5 degrees. Summer-flowering deciduous shrubs, like jasmine and potentilla, should be pruned every 2-3 years in June. Since these plants form flower buds in the summer, after flowering, too frequent or too late (July, August) pruning may reduce the growth of new flowers in the season. Prune new shoots on shrubs flowering on last year's growth by at least 1/3 and up to 3/4 of their length.
Pruning Evergreen Shrubs
Evergreen shrubs usually require annual sanitary pruning. This can be done at any time of the year, whenever it is necessary to remove damaged shoots that could harbor diseases.
