Pruning: Mugo Pine x2

Friday, August 12, 2022

May 29, 2021
More pruning, although, with the Mugo Pines you can't be too drastic. Basically, when they put out these little "candlesticks" in early-mid May, you break them all off. Eventually, they'll branch out from every candlestick you broke, creating a shorter, denser plant. Throw in some more severe shaping pruning that won't lead to regrowth, and you can hopefully keep these pines around the same size for awhile.

May 14, 2022
Of course, I let these go for 4 years, so we've had considerably more vertical growth and not as much dense-growth as we should have. C'est la vie.

May 14, 2022

Rejuvenative Pruning: Japanese Spirea and Shrubby Cinquefoil

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

August 31, 2021
Last year I gave our two Japanese Spirea a deadheading after their first blooming, which lead to another round of flowers for the bees! I followed that up with a more severe shaping pruning, because they were still a mess from 4 years of no shaping or pruning.

May 3, 2022
So, this was a slightly better shape, but I still wasn't loving it. Still so many dead branches from neglect. So I did my research and determined that Japanese Spirea can be chopped to the ground in early spring and will return with a younger, better shape. A rejuvenative pruning a la the forsythia.

May 18, 2022
So I cut them to the ground in early May, and a couple weeks later we had some promising regrowth! I suspect by the end of the summer they'll be in much better shape and ready to look lovely for next year.

May 18, 2022
While I was at it, I did a milder pruning of the shrubby cinquefoil or "buttercup bush". I cut it back by about half...and by the looks of it, I should go back in and cut off the dead branches around the bottom.

Rejuvenative Pruning: Gold Mop False Cypress x2

Sunday, August 7, 2022

Last year's personal landscaping project was pruning the euonymus hedge to let air and light in, by cutting back each stem to the first growth on the stem. And then there was the forsythia "pruning" which was done by hacking the shrub all the way to the ground. I'm happy to say that both of these projects were a huge success. The hedge is shorter and bushier than it was before, and the forsythia is nearly fully recovered and better than ever.

Which means...more pruning of landscaping we haven't trimmed in 4 years!

May 14, 2022
In order to properly prune, you first need to identify what the plant is. I find reddit/whatsThisPlant invaluable for this step. This time we're working with our two Gold Mop False Cypress shrubs in the front yard. We're doing a pruning a la the euonymus, so we're trimming each branch back to the first "V"-branching, or first off shoot, and occasionally cutting all the way back to the trunk, particularly in the top to let more light in. Also, being particularly aggressive on the side that faces the house. Don't need it scraping the paint off!

May 11, 2022
Do the shrubs look bad? Yes. Terrible, even? Of course. But by the end of summer, they'll fill out and be a denser, trimmer version of their earlier selves.
With a shaping trimming they'd look better in the short term, but that would just result in lots of dead branches in the middle, and only growth on the very outside (which is how they've been treated since before we bought the house). I'm trying to get these folks as small and dense as they'll go.

Forsythia, First Season After Pruning to Ground

Sunday, May 8, 2022

April 20, 2022
Last spring, we pruned our overgrown forsythia bush back halfway, and we noticed it actually recovered quite quickly:

July 10, 2021
So, a few months later, we cut off all of the old growth, and ended up with a rather hefty, but shorter (and happier!) forsythia:

August 13, 2021
We knew this meant we'd have reduced (or no?) yellow flowers this year, its first season after basically being cut back to the ground:

April 20, 2022
And while it doesn't look so good this season, compared to all the neighborhood forsythia that are covered in yellow flowers, I can see the leaf buds on the branches and have full faith that it will look so much better next year. All while being considerably more manageable of a shrub!

The plan this year is to prune the tallest branches, and any remaining old growth, or branches that split, all the way back to the ground to begin the cycle of having some new growth every year.

Deadheading Flowering Shrubs with a Hard Pruning Leads to a Second Flowering

Sunday, November 21, 2021

August 31, 2021
That right there is the Japanese Spirea in the front landscaping bed, doing its second blooming, after I gave it a hard pruning when it finished its first set of blooms. So, this is just a reminder to myself that when the spirea (both of them) look spent and faded like below:

June 12, 2020
...it is time to give them a terrible haircut, to encourage regrowth. It's sort of like deadheading, but there's so many flowers on this shrub that cutting each individual flower that's passed off would take awhile.

August 31, 2021
Yes, it still looks quite shaggy, but it's due for a hard + shaping pruning again in early spring. That way its new growth can fill out any holes. The spirea, and both the gold mop false cypress, the two Mugo Pines and the yew cone, and the eunymous, and the potentilla, and whatever that layered evergreen pine tree is. Back in June, I figured out how to correctly prune most of the shrubs on the property, but only the euonymus can be pruned in early summer, simply because it's so invasive it doesn't matter. Everything else must wait until early spring for their hard pruning, and then a lighter shaping prune later on in the season once the new growth has come in.

September 16, 2021
The other spirea, which is a lighter pink, is not re-blooming nearly as strongly. But, it is just as shaggy and unkempt as the other. To next spring, and possibly having better-looking shrubbery then!

A "Rejuvenative" Pruning for an Overgrown Forsythia

Sunday, July 11, 2021

June 6, 2021.

June 30, 2020.

There's a drastic before & after. At least, if you're the iconic forsythia that sits in the middle of our mountain view!

I had been doing some research on pruning forsythia, and realized the lanscapers hired by the previous owner had likely been pruning it all wrong for 15 years. Pruning just the tips of the forsythia repeatedly may get you the desired shape for a couple months, but also ends up with the tips of the branches splitting more and more, getting heavier and heavier. Requires more shaping all the time.

Meanwhile, what the forsythia actually wants is to have a handful of its thickest/oldest branches pruned to the ground every year. In our case, we opted for a more rejuvenative pruning, and cut 3/4 of the branches to the ground, after flowering. This gives plenty of light and air for new, younger branches to sprout from the base.

May 1, 2021.

Next year, after flowering, we'll prune the remaining old branches, and then the forsythia will be a whole new plant! We're hoping it'll be smaller and better able to cope with the gale force winds we get. We'll have reduced flowers next year, but hopefully a healthier plant going forward.

I also took the opportunity to spruce up the area underneath the forsythia. This will make it easier for J to mow around it. I weeded and dug up sod, then added compost, cardboard weed block, and some leaf mulch. ...Pretty much what I always do! A modified hugelkultur.

A few weeks later, and we already have new branches sprouting at the base! So everything is looking promising!

June 6, 2021.

Pruning the Invasive Euonymus Hedge

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

How to follow up that previous, super exciting post on woodchipping?! Well, with even more exciting content, such as pruning an overgrown (and poorly pruned) euonymous hedge. This is the content you're all dying to read, I know.

We have a rather large, rather sparse euonymus hedge that we hadn't pruned since we moved into the house. It was looking pretty shabby with tons of fly-aways on top, branches to smack you in the face on yopur way into the garage basement, and a groundhog that chewed the leaves off of the branches around his home entrance. Upon inspection I realized the entire interior of the hedge was dead, which suggests the landscapers hired by the previous owners likely only did "shaping" pruning for the past 15 years. This results in a shrub with thick outer foliage that blocks all sunlight and air to the interior, thereby killing off everything inside.

So, what to do? Some research and these helpful videos suggests that this euonymus is invasive, and unlikely to die easily...so better to rejuvenatively prune now than not at all. I also am not overly concerned about not having this hedge flower this year, so I decided to prune liberally before it even had a chance to flower. I cut nearly every long growing vine back to the first double-set of leaves/buds. I removed all the dead vines I could find. Broke off dead sticks, sawed off dead trunks. Cleared out as much as I could to get more sunlight and air into the interior of the hedge. It's not perfect, but this year we'll consider a regrowing year. Next year, we'll consider shaping it.

You can already see the sunlight getting in there! Hopefully it thickens up over the next few years so we can get a solid hedge back.

The last task was just to burn the trimmings. So. Many. Trimmings. Can't have this invasive stuff overtaking the nearby park.