Why, what and when to prune

Like feeding your plants, pruning is one of the essential practises in gardening that plays a vital role in supporting healthy plants.

By removing certain parts of a plant – buds, branches or roots – you can promote healthier growth, stimulate new growth, improve the shape and control to some degree the spread of pests and diseases to name just a few. Here are some of the benefits of pruning:

Rejuvenate 

One of the most important reasons to prune, is to stimulate new growth, sometimes bushier growth, which also in turn produces more stems and more leaves and ultimately more flowers. Over time, plants will become leggy and lose their vigour. There are various degrees of pruning from a simple pinching with your fingers to more extreme pruning to rejuvenate and enhance.

Finger pruning or pinching 

The lightest of pruning is to pinch off the new shoots at a node that forces the plants to make two or three new stems. The reason to do this is to create bushier plants – more leaves in herbs for example. Finger pruning is also done on Hybrid Tea roses to stagger and extend the flowering flush.

Not all roses though need this treatment. It also encourages the roots to absorb nutrients for growth and flowers and encourages new basal shoots which give the plant its shape for the new season. This is also applicable to young seedlings or bedding plants, specifically those which tend to want to reach for the skies rather than filling out and bushing out first. Examples of this are snapdragons – the tall growing varieties, sweet peas, delphiniums and tall flowering zinnias.

Deadheading