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We tell you which plants need pruning after flowering, how and when is the best time to do it.
Pruning flowers, like other plants, stimulates their growth and prevents or limits disease. Pruning perennial plants is an important part of plant culture. We tell you which plants need pruning after flowering, how and when is the best time to do it.
Barberry
The need and timing of pruning barberry depend on the purpose for which you are growing it. If for the sake of berries, then you need to prune the bushes in late autumn or spring to remove dry branches. If barberry is grown for decorative purposes, as a hedge or a complex shape, the bush should be pruned after flowering. During this period, the plant can be subjected to only minor pruning. To trim barberry radically, you need to wait until the end of the fruiting period.
Hydrangea
You need to be careful with hydrangea because pruning this plant requires knowledge and skill. Even an inexperienced gardener can cope with removing dried inflorescences.
Hydrangeas of the first group of pruning, and these are all varieties of round-leaved, palmate and prickly hydrangea, Sargent hydrangea, oak-leaved and petiolate, lay flower buds at the ends of last year’s shoots. Therefore, you need to trim their inflorescences very carefully, doing this in the spring, when the buds swell. But the hydrangeas of the second group of pruning, tree and paniculate hydrangeas, which form flower stalks on the shoots of the current year, can be pruned after flowering.
Irises
Dried flowers, as well as outdated peduncles of irises, must be removed immediately after flowering. They not only spoil the appearance of the flower garden, but can become a breeding ground for diseases. Cut flower stalks at a height of 2.5 cm from the root, remove dry and damaged leaves, and leave healthy ones until autumn. And if you feed and water irises after flowering, some of them, for example, bearded ones, may bloom towards the end of the season.
Lavender
Lavender can be pruned quite often to form regularly shaped bushes and encourage flowering and growth. Immediately after lavender blooms, when most of it has already bloomed, but there are still buds, the flower stalks are removed and the branches are cut to 5-7 cm to provoke a second wave of flowering. At the end of the season, re-pruning is carried out, leaving only 4-5 green shoots.
Peonies
After flowering, you need to trim off flower stalks with loose petals and spotted leaves. It is advisable to do this before the bush exhausts all its strength, and prune drying flowers as they appear. In this case, there is no need to remove the stem at the root, but leave it at a height of 3-4 leaves. Peony leaves are finally cut off in September, but throughout the summer it is necessary to remove leaves with signs of disease.
Rosemary
This shrub with fragrant leaves and blue flowers is grown both in flower beds and vegetable gardens. It is clear that the greens from it are regularly torn off for culinary purposes, but with flowers everything is not so simple. They need to be removed at the beginning of summer, immediately after flowering, cutting off the entire peduncle.
If the rosemary bushes are already mature and have grown greatly, then pruning is also done in early spring. In this case, weak and low-lying shoots are removed, overgrown specimens are rejuvenated, all branches are shortened by half.
Roses
Not a single type of this plant can survive without summer pruning of roses. Timely removal of dried flowers allows roses to accumulate strength without wasting it on fruit formation.
On roses that form several buds on one stem, cut off the entire cluster above the upper five-leaf stem. In hybrid tea roses, the shoots are cut off almost completely, leaving only 3-4 leaves above the soil level. In climbing ramblers, after flowering ends, the stems are removed down to the first leaf.
Lilac
Immediately after the bush has finished blooming, carefully cut off the dry brushes with pruners, being careful not to injure the branches themselves. Remove the shoots that thicken the thin shoots, but put off the shaping pruning until the fall or early next spring.
Forsythia
It is possible and necessary to prune forsythia after flowering if it is healthy and regularly undergoes molding and sanitary pruning. If the forsythia bush has overgrown, aged and thickened, then it is better to carry out this procedure in early spring, when there are no flowers and leaves yet and the middle of the forsythia is clearly visible.
Japonica
The spring flowering of Japanese quince will not leave any gardener indifferent. If you grow quince exclusively as an ornamental crop, it needs to be pruned after flowering. Old branches are removed at ground level so that the bush does not thicken, and the side shoots are shortened, removing faded parts.
