Prune Me if you Love Me

My blushingpink Knockouts are leafing out nicely. Tomorrow should help. My hedges--well, they're blobular. Going to look like h@ll for several weeks until new growth. But, I know to maintain them I have to remove about a thousand pounds of growth per summer and this is the way I feel like doing it this year. I thinned out my Bridal wreath SSpirea nicely tho. My old crabapple-I just scratch my head. I don't think an amateur can really figure out a big full grown never shaped thing like crabapple. other than taking out suckers, rubbing branches, dead ones.

Blobular is good. Some people really have the knack for seeing what a tree will look like a few years after a pruning, and some trees are just tricky that way. The ornamental plums are an example. I see lots of strange pruning jobs on them.
I cut back the Buddleia to two pairs of leaf shoots per stem yesterday. It'll be eight or nine feet high by August. It's just plain oI' white but it smells good. I got a gallon-sized 'Gillian Blades' Clematis at walm art last year when someone here mentioned a sale on them. It's pruning goup 2 (or B, depending) but I don't think it will need more than a snip here and there. I guess that's supposed to happen soon.

I like my blobular hedge but it's crept out to 6-7 feet wide. I am proud that because I don't shear it closely to 2 by 3, I DO NOT have ANY euonymus scale. ( i have sung that song on two other threads but I feel they don't believe me)
I just got my Buddleai cut the other day too. Its about fifteen yrs old and getting pretty stumpy at the bottom.
Clematis pruning groups are why clematis just seem too hard for me : ^)
And thanks but don't anybody hop in and try to change my mind!!!! I'm workign my way through plenty of 'plants to try' already

Oh, I find pruning clematis to be annoying as far as trying to keep up with the different types and pruning methods, so I've taken to pruning all of mine the same way; a conservative approach by pruning back to a length of about 2-3 ft. Works fine, imo.

My neighbor helped me prune the one I put at our mailboxes last year. She weed-wacked it to the ground with MY WEED-WHACKER THAT I LOANED HER! Luckily it came back.

Actually, I take that back. I have an evergreen type of clematis (blanking on which one) which I do not prune at all.

Signed,
Ima Liar

miatablu---"Luckily it came back." The clematis or the weedwacker??? ; ^)

SNORT

Clematis pruning isn't really all that hard if you know what Clementis you have and a lot of people really don't know. Mine has been growing beautifully for years and I whack it back every fall. Which is definitely "NOT" what I should have been doing with it. And since it has been working well for me I'm not sure I'll bother to change. I cut back about half of one of my bushes. We call it a Cardinal Bush but I'm really not sure exactly what it is. I brought in several branches and they are flowering for me It would be nice if they rooted. Something in that bucket is rooting but I can't tell without tearing them all out if it's the Cardinal bush or the Black Pussywillows that are sharing the bucket with them .

LOL, I agree, Holly. It's definitely not hard to do, but my problem is that I do not retain the information from season to season. I've always got to refer back to my plant ID notes and pruning book ... but, I'm too lazy to bother with it, so I just give them a good in-between clip that I read about on some clematis website.

"Ima Liar" - you ladies are too funny!! I have to admit I have the same problem as wrightie, "do not retain the information from season to season", although the older I get I'm lucky if I retain the information from "week to week"! LOL I pretty much do the same thing with my clematis because I can't remember which one is which and that's probably why I have never had the knockout flowering that I've seen in some of the photos :( Maybe one of these years I'll pay closer attention and they'll be happier with me!

HA, I have cheat sheets for everything including my children's names. LOL
Last year I got Clematis from one of the co-ops and they were nice when we got them, no problem with the co-op it's self. One was very small and died right away and several people had problems with that one. I think they gave us credit for it. I gave one each to both my Mom and Daughter and my DIL took 2 of them. They all lost theirs. I just didn't realize that they needed more care than they would get just being planted outside like that. I had three that I kept for myself and due to my procrastination they never got planted almost till fall. They were looking pretty good when they went into the ground. But there is no sign of them now and it will be a wait and see thing. So I had done a lot of reading up on pruning Clematis last year. Of course I kept the magazine article it was such a good one. Now if only I can find it if I want it. LOL

I think it's still too early to see clematis sprouting -- at least none of mine were up yet the last time I looked. I seem to remember seeing them around the same time as hostas (also not yet up).

I managed to do a little pruning the other day... pruned the straight branches off the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, got some bottom shoots off the fruit trees, did a little pruning on the pear and the nectarine... the pear needs to be cut down a bit height-wise, also. My poor buddlea hasn't been pruned the last couple of years because it was really struggling and I thought it maybe needed every branch it had... but it looked better last year... anyway, I've now cut it back to within a couple feet of the ground, and I sure hope that was the right thing for it! I guess we'll see. If not, it's time is up and I'll replace it. If necessary, I'll tell it so -- sometimes plants respond to threats. LOL

I took a few branches off the crooked willow and stuck half a dozen cuttings. If they root, I'll pot them or find more protected pots to put them while they grow on this year. They seem to do better (according to my mom, who has propagated several from her tree) if you let them grow up for a couple of years before planting them out in their permanent spots. I've got a big pot with some cuttings from last year; need to get those planted out in a little nursery area too. My mom has dibs on the best one (mine came from her tree, which is now elderly and may need replacing soon), and hopefully I'll have others available at some point.

Several of my clematis have new green growth, but I may have a bit warmer microclimate than yours, C, being inside the beltway and pretty well protected here.

I should say that the ones that continue growing from last year's growth (group 2?) are greening up a bit... but the ones that go dormant and come back as new shoots from the base of the plant haven't shown up yet.

I've got new shoots, too! =)

I guess I really need to go back and read up on Clematis Groups once again ... and hope & pray that it sinks into all of my Grey Matterz.

Re the clematis and others--"When'" I get really organized I will put some care notes right on a plant label that I stick in the ground with the plant, so when I am right there with the shears in hand I''ll know what to do.

And then the dog will pull it out and eat it.

Ha! That's what I do, actually... I'm not bothering to label which pruning group, since I need a cheat sheet to remember which is which... I just write on the back of label, "prune to ground" or "trim."

My old Clematis isn't showing any signs for new growth yet. But the Crocus and Tulips I put in that bed are all coming up. That's the lamppost bed we enlarged last fall. I have a Clematis growing up the lamppost and then I added 3 more on three sides of the new bed I will put in trellises for each one. You can just see the old Clematis at the base of the lamppost.