I hard prunned some of my 3's including my 6 year old sweet autumn this past Saturday and Sunday and cleaned up my some of my 2's. On Sunday we got up to 72, was nice. I'm not done yet since I have 20 plus to work on. I started one 30 gal trash can of Alfalfa Tea to ferterlize all mine in the next couple weeks. I used 2 cups of alfalfa feed pellets per 5 gals of water and then poured the buckets into the 30 gal trash can to work before I use it in a couple of weeks, I stir it up every day until I use it . Once I cut the 3's I made sure I covered them back up real good with mulch that I had already on them, but they are pretty hardy even if we get down to 25 or so. I usually have to cover someone up with blankets and its usually Asao, she already has buds almost 1/2 the size of my little finger and Jackmani has about 18 new shoots coming from the ground. Sandy

Bob is correct. As an experiment I didn't prune some of my Type 3's several years ago. They only bloomed way up high and I didn't have as many blooms. Now all of mine go back to 12" to 18" The reason I go back to 12-18" is I leave the old stems attached across the bottom of the trellis on the bottom rung. Then I don't have to retrain them across the bottom at the beginning of the growing season to get a wide spread across the trellis. Katie

Anita, in my zone 7a garden I prune all my clematis in late December. Fall is generally not a good time to prune since the clematis will more than likely still be actively growing and pruning will stimulate more growth. This is not what you want to happen when colder weather is set to arrive. As to your second question, some of the cut vines may fall off in the winter wind but some may stay and require removal by you. It all really depends how much you are planning to cut off, how much you leave on the plants, and how windy and turbulent your winter weather is.

I try to group them by pruning type to make pruning easier. I try to put ones that are type 1 & 2 where I don't have to look at them in the winter since the dead vines aren't too decorative. The areas I see in winter get type 3's since I can prune them back in early winter and just have the trellis or bare-branched shrub that it is growing on to look at.