It’s spring, and out comes the pruning equipment. Many trees and shrubs can and should be pruned in the early spring, but not all should be pruned now. The correct time to prune depends on bloom time.
Trees and shrubs that can and should be pruned now?
Fruit trees. Prune to optimize fruiting. Peaches, plums, apples, cherries, pears, crabapples are pruned before flowering and before fruit sets.
Deciduous and evergreen. Prune to maintain shape and strength. Remove dead, damaged, weak, competing branches.
Prune while dormant, for stimulating new wood to encourage flowering: Roses, Beautyberry, Rose of Sharon, Crape Myrtle, Buddleia, Abelia, Hydrangea.
Evergreens: Junipers, pines, spruce, conifers. Any deciduous tree that is non-blooming Prune after flowering: Wait to prune spring-flowering trees and shrubs until after they bloom. Spring flowers form on previous season’s wood. Pruning now will cut off flower buds that will have bloomed this year.
Summer pruning encourages stronger growth during the summer and provides new, additional wood for next season’s flowers: Lilac (Syringa); flowering quince; Forsythia; flowering crabapples, pears, plums, cherries; Oakleaf Hydrangea; Spirea; Viburnum; Wisteria; Spanish Broom
Ellen Peffley Harp, a retired professor of horticulture at Texas Tech University, writes about gardening for several Texas newspapers.
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