Late winter/early spring - March is ideal. Top Hat doesn't require a great deal of pruning but remove any dead and weak branches as well as any thin, terminal wood with small buds. Prune interior crossing branches to permit light to reach the center of the plants. In following years, thin out older branches in order to force new growth. Flower buds of blueberry bushes are produced on tips and down the stems of two-year old wood.

Katrina, the 'best' time for nearly all tree pruning is dormant season, late dormant season to be exact. But, the difference between the 'best' and 'worst' times is not huge. Don't get too stressed about that factor. If one simply avoids pruning when A) The tree is making leaves, ie. Spring, or B) the tree is shedding its leaves, ie. Fall, everything will be fine. And those 1/2 inch thick branches are by no means too large for the tree to handle having them removed. The idea that a flowering tree should be pruned right after flowering is that by so doing, you are not removing flower buds for next year. This is true, but it is far outweighed by other advantages of dormant-season pruning. These are: You can see the structure better, you are allowing the tree to have open wounds for the least amount of time before resumption of growth in Spring, the plant will be poised to put its energy into the branches you leave on the tree and will not have wasted energy in producing leaves only to have them cut off, and finally, disease pressure is usually lower at this time of year. FWIW, the organization I work for manages perhaps thirty to forty thousand individual trees. We prune year round, out of necessity, avoiding only those two times mentioned above. There are a few individual variances we follow as well. We prune no oaks during during growing season, as this can open up the plant to oak wilt. We prune no honey locusts on wet days, as this can set the stage for nectria canker development, and any shearing-type pruning such as Japanese yew hedges are done in summer, no later than August, so the wounds can close before winter, thereby avoiding dessication of the cut stems. But otherwise, you really do have a large window during which the pruning can safely (For the tree) be done. There may be a difference from one region to another in terms of pathogens and host susceptability, but at least where I do my work, I wouldn't think twice about whether or not to prune a cherry, or any other ornamental tree, during late winter. I don't wish to come across like mine is the last word on the subject, but I can state unequivocably that I've done literally thousands of such prunings with no harm done to the plants. Trying to help here ;^) +oM

thx soooo.. if you prune it at the wrong moment.. and you miss it setting fruit next season.. who cares .. eh?? i used to be with you.. on i got to save everything in the world for mother earth .. sorry.. that ship sailed along time ago ... if it annoys me.. its gone ... not soon after.. to be replaced with something of year around interest that does NOT annoy me ... net loss to mother earth .. ZERO ... that which i took.. i replaced ... get over it.. and get rid of it ... there are too many really cool things that are better ... cut it flush to the ground.. treat the stump.. and figure out what to plant a few feet over.. where you can dig a new hole .... ken

Depends on the rose. Once bloomers are pruned after they bloom in the spring. I usually do my old roses at that time too. (teas, chinas and such) Hybrid teas (most grafted) are done a couple of times a year. A severe prune is done in the spring around the middle of February. Cut them back to about a foot or foot and a half. The idea is to get the plant to put out new growth from the graft.(fertilize then too) Then in early September you trim the bush by one third. This prune is to promote the fall flush. Be careful trimming old roses in the fall. They can respond with lots of new growth that can't get tough enough to withstand the winter freezes. It's probably better to lightly trim those roses throughout the year than do too much pruning in the fall. Climbers have more pruning care to consider but most people don't have climbers so I won't go there.