I don't know about in VA but here you really don't need to prune. Cut out dead wood, rubbing branches and shaping but other than that nothing.

Coriander (cilantro): A very short-lived annual, sometimes living out its entire life-cycle in a matter of 2-3 weeks. Those leaves won't have a good flavour (once they start changing to lacy, they've bolted), so just let the plants go to seed and die a natural death. It's too late to do much else! Those seeds will grow into more plants. Most people grow coriander by sowing new seeds every couple of weeks to keep up supplies of useful leaves. (successive planting) Chives: only 2 inches tall?? They won't be seeds on the leaves, they'll be dirt or bugs (probably aphids). You'll get seeds after the flowers die off - and flowers haven't happened yet, have they? They'll appear on the top of long, firm stems. Chives grow in a clump which you can divide once the clump gets larger (say when it's about 30cm/12" in diameter). Leave them be for now, and never prune the leaves at all unless you're actually harvesting. Wait until you have enough leaves to use. Dill: a photo would be useful. Dill can get about a metre tall, so it's still a tiny baby. Here's a picture of mature dill. http://julielepage.com/blog/photos/2005/07/15/3.jpg You can harvest the leaves any time you like, but never more than one-third of total growth at any one time, then let it regenerate before you harvest again. Same with most plants. Basil: still a tiny baby. I'm surprised there are no flowers yet. Basil can flower from a very early stage, and it's from the flowers that you get the seeds (same with most plants). It has a LOT of growing to do, (it will get to about 1 metre tall, maybe a bit more, and about the same wide), but you can harvest the leaves at any time, taking no more than one-third of total growth at any one time. To encourage a bushier plant, chop off the flowers. If your plant ends up like mine, you'll spend a lot of your life chopping off the flowers!! In brief, be patient!! Your plants are only tiny babies just yet, so you won't get any useful quantities from them. Forget about pruning for now. Wait another few weeks. Meantime, do some browsing via the Search button here on this forum for more information. You know, I really hate it when people try to generalise about 'herbs'. With 20000 known herbs on the planet, you can't generalise at all!

Hello Monica, Pruning when the forsythia blooms is a good guide. I usually prune early to mid April. You can also tell when the roses are ready to by the swelling of the buds on the stems. Hybrid teas and floribundas are usually pruned harder than shrub roses, which you can prune for shape. Your ground cover roses, may not need much pruning. If they were about the height I wanted, I would probably shear them with hedge shears and clean up with pruners. You can remove dead wood from your roses any time of year. If you have roses that are once blooming (June only), do not prune them in spring or you'll cut off the blooms. Once bloomers are pruned right after they finish blooming. I'm in the Utah Rose Society and would like to direct you to the URS website www.utah-rose.com. You can read some info about many rose topics there, and there is contact information for the number of local Consulting Rosarians. If you have specific questions you can call any of them on the phone and they'd be happy to answer your questions. If you email, Jerry and June are the ones that read their email most often. You can also check out Bob Bauer's website. He's a SLC rosarian who also is the URS webmaster, and has his own rose site www.rose-roses.com. Here's a quote from his site on fall pruning. Preventitive Fall Pruning For those areas with true winter seasons, you should get your roses ready for their winter sleep after the first killing frost or BEFORE the first big winter snowstorm. The reason you want to prune at this time is to prevent winter damage to the plant from the breaking off of large canes. Take a look at each bush and lop off all of the large candelabras on the end of tall canes. This is the point at which accumulating snow can breat the whole cane off. Also big crossing branches need to be removed so that they don't saw each other to death during winter wind storms. Any long whiplike canes that could cause damage to itself or other plants should be removed. DO NOT, however do your major pruning at this time. Your roses need to use the stored energy from the canes in order to survive winter in a health fashion. Major Pruning of modern recurrent varieties should only be done in the spring in areas with a true winter. If you find yourself interested in the Society, we meet the third Thursday of every month except January and I would encourage you to come check out a meeting. Here's a link to Bob's Spring pruning page. Barb Here is a link that might be useful: spring pruning

The taller types of Geranium benefit from shearing after the first flush of bloom. Cut all stems to about 3". The plants will put on a new flush of leaves and may reflower. G. sanguinium types can be sheared by taking 3" off the top growth to remove dead heads.