To prune or not to prune - help!
lauriescreams
7 years ago
Yet again I must appeal to the wisdom and experience of this forum. My container roses have spent their first winter in the unheated greenhouse. In the beginning of March, I cut the dead sections off the canes - not that was much to cut off. This is what Blue Moon and Ingrid Bergman look like now:
Is it too late to cut them down? Is it necessary? Everything just looked so healthy, I didn't have the heart to cut them down.
Can I leave them as is this year and maybe cut down a little lower next spring to keep the height manageable?
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lauriescreams
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Dormant Pruning/First pruning of plum tree
Comments (1)In your zone plums are usually pruned after risk of below zero weather is likely passed. I do not know about specific diseases in your area, but here I've never seen silver leaf. Black knot is the only specific disease routinely encountered here with most plums that doesn't attack the fruit. In my nursery, I don't prune E. plums the first year at all, beyond removing broken and oversized branches- those more than a third the diameter of the trunk at point of their attachment to the trunk. I generally prune as little as possible until trees come into fruiting except for peaches. Upright E. plums do benefit from early branch spreading for a more open shape and early fruiting....See MoreHelp: Choose Semi-dwarf vs. Dwarf; To prune or not to prune?
Comments (4)Peaches bear on last year's wood, every year you will need to prune it to head that wood back and to remove old wood to make room for new. Pruning that one for size won't be any additional work. But it may be easier to do all the pruning on the peach if it's not 15'. The pear will bear on long lived spurs so it will require very little pruning (if it's well behaved) once it's trained and probably reach larger than expected if you don't do size pruning. So you can only consider "to prune or not to prune" with the pear, and even then you're going to have damage control and thinning of some branches required. I've seen companies that were right on the money with their estimates and I've seen companies that greatly underestimate their sizes. I have never seen a company predict a huge size and hand out dwarf sizes. My rule of thumb is that if it's going to be other than claimed it will err to the large side. I've seen trees bought as dwarfs that dwarf my accurately sized semi-dwarf apple that's pushing 20 years with very little pruning later in life. I'd go dwarf for both. If you flipped the planting spaces around I may change to semi-dwarf for the pear just to get more fruit. But I wouldn't want to be climbing 15' to head back branches or be thinning out old 15' branches....See MorePruning Jackmani
Comments (5)Becky...pruning it back will not hurt it..unfortuately what happens when the pruning group 3's AREN'T hardpruned each year they will not show viable leaf axils as you say on the lower 4 ft of the vine..I would hard prune down to about 1 foot from the soil and you'll see that vine rejuvenated like never before!!..It will shoot up tons of new vines and grow like mad...do remember to give it some rose or Tomato fertilizer when you prune and make a pact with yourself to hard prune it each and every late winter/early Spring...Jeanne...See MorePrune! Prune! Prune! Repot!
Comments (10)Tina, I'm moving to Gainesville. Calm down, not leaving FL. Amber, I lived in Ruskin then Bradenton when I first moved to FL. I know all too well that it gets cold here. Even way down here in 9b, it's been a cold winter. I've lived in this house for 14 years, and only once in the first 12 did my jatrophas freeze. Last year they froze down to the ground, and luckily came back. This year, they have lost all their leaves, and will probably lose a good bit of the tops of their limbs. I'm glad I won't be here to have to clean up all the winter dead stuff this year!...See Morelauriescreams
7 years agolauriescreams
7 years agolauriescreams
7 years agolauriescreams
7 years ago
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mad_gallica (z5 Eastern NY)