I prune excessive extension growth in spring and summer. So this is above the fruit. Just removing excess growth but retaining enough leaves to sweeten the crop. Then after harvest I shape the tree up as needed, usually not a lot. I do very little pruning in winter. The exception is renewal pruning. Then I may need to head back in winter to force new growth down low. My biggest issue is wanting fruit on a new tree ASAP at the expense of forming a proper tree. Renewal pruning starts early by forcing a bushy tree in the early years and doing adequate pruning each year after to keep good wood down low on the tree. So my usual methods may leave a lot to be desired.

I recently had a neighbor approach me as I was fixing some rotted siding on my garage. This is the neighbor whose lawn is saturated with creeping charlie. He asked, hey with all the money you are putting into this house, are you planning on staying here awhile? First, the repairs we were making weren't for cosmetic purposes, they were more functional. I'd assumed, "all the money" meant all the landscaping we've done ourselves. I love my yard, and I regret not getting started on it sooner when we purchased our home in 2004, we waited a few years and focused on the interior, with no relaxing, private, soothing patio to relax on. But, oh, today, we can enjoy sitting on our patio on our very small lot, with privacy from our neighbors. It's nice, and would I love to purchase a home with the landscaping already done? You bet, but I don't regret that I had to do it myself, because now I'm hooked and I love what I've learned - gardening and landscaping is very therapeutic to me. I've also wondered how much is too much, but I've been told by neighbors that I'm their inspiration, and we have people stopping at the front of our house to view our property from time to time, so we are heading in the right direction, especially as plants begin to mature. I have a small back yard, and yet in my rear yard I have a poplar tree (soon to be replaced), a mature lilac shrub, a hedge of privets, 2 smokebush trees/shrubs, a green giant thuja, an emerald green thuja, 5 purple leaf sand cherries, a serviceberry, a red japanese maple, a heptacodium, and a katsura willow tree, among various perennials, vines, and evergreen and deciduous shrubs. I'm thinking of adding a degroots spire and replacing the poplar with a dogwood or magnolia. The placement for each works, and creates a nice lush private space for us. I have run out of planting space, but I don't intend to lose more lawn, so now it's just waiting for everything to reach maturity and a matter of enjoying what we created. As long as you are comfortable in your own space, that's all that matters. There are a couple homes that we see on our walks in the neighborhood, with the front lawn completely over done in an awkward cottage style. There's nothing wrong with the style, but I think when homes like that are wedged between other homes with more open or formal landscaping, it looks odd and out of place. I feel sorry for the immediate neighbors. In my opinion when all you see is the landscaping from the curb and not the house, that's when you've gone overboard. I dread the day we sell our home and someone who doesn't appreciate what we've done lives here. We joke about it sometimes. But, I've recently heard from some new owners in the neighborhood that others talk about the work we've done on the house with the "striped awnings", so it's nice to hear when you've invested so much sweat into improving it and making it your own. I don't care if anyone thinks we've put too much money into our house. We didn't buy to flip it, and I don't ask everyone else how they spend their money.

In cold locations, the stems dry out and die so the plant grows from the ground back up in Spring. It therefore makes sense to prune the dried out stems any time. Some people do it in the Fall, others in early Spring. You can also deadhead the blooms at any time. It is much warmer in my zone so I usually do neither. I let the blooms fall on their own but do not prune it to the ground because the stems do not usually dry out here. I suspect the blooms fall between Jan-Mar but I usually do not even notice!

Both trumpet creeper and wisteria are fairly rampant growers, and will require occasional pruning both to keep them within bounds and encourage flower production - if left largely unpruned, they will expend a lot of their energy on vegetative (leaves, shoots) growth and direct less of it toward flowering. As a broad general rule, if you are going to prune vines, it is best to prune them in the period after they complete flowering. It is best to avoid pruning them in the period leading up to their next flowering, because you are likely to inadvertantly prune off many of the future flowering buds and so lose much of your next flowering display (the flower buds may not be readily apparent while you're pruning). How long this window of pruning opportunity lasts depends upon the vine and is something you will get a feel for with experience. Of course, if the vine is a total mess due to neglect, you may want to prune harshly regardless of the timing so as to get it in bounds and train it for the future. Vines that flower most effectively in the spring, such as Wisteria, do so on the growth of the previous year. Thus, if you prune Wisteria too late in the previous summer and fall, you are likely to have a non-flowering wisteria in the spring because you've pruned away most of the potential flower buds. In my experience, the latter do not even become apparent until the springtime. You want then to do major pruning on wisteria in early to mid-summer. Long, wispy shoots can even be pruned away in the fall because they are unlikely to produce flowers next spring. It is substantial branches/branchlets that you want to avoid late pruning on. As you put your garden to bed for the winter, you ideally want your Wisteria to be a relatively compact woody entity with a lot of somewhat short, thick woody spurs (not stubs) coming out of a main trunk and at most a few major branches (assuming you're not trying to cover a tremendously large space with one vine that is)- you don't want a lot of small diameter but comparatively lengthy branches shooting out everywhere from the main trunk and limbs. As with any vine, shrub or tree, when you prune you ideally want to prune back to a bud - you don't want to leave stubs protruding. Creating your framework of comparatively short spurs (the type of architecture most conducive to wisteria flowering) may take a couple or more seasons to develop, particularly if pruning has been misguided in the past and/or you need your Wisteria to grow and cover a large space - once it is as big as you want it to be, you can direct your pruning efforts toward developing the short spur framework. Wisteria will sometimes produce flowers after leafing out in summer on new growth (particularly if it didn't flower in the spring), but this is usually ornamentally ineffective - it is the spring flowering before leaf-out which gardeners aim to achieve and towards which proper pruning efforts should be directed. There have been many good articles written about Wisteria pruning over the years, and I encourage you to seek them out to learn the nuances. I've dealt mainly with generalities above. Trumpet creeper flowers in summer on growth of the current year, so it follows that you can prune it freely in the autumn but should be wary of particularly late spring to early summer pruning lest you remove flower buds. It's my impression that pruning for Campsis is generally less tricky than for Wisteria, and you're likely to get flowering even if you make some mistakes, whereas improper pruning is the reason why some wisterias seem year after year to not flower at all. Good luck with your efforts.