Summer is upon us even if the weather is a bit dull and grey as I write this. Now and in the next few weeks is a great time to prune certain plants.
Summer pruning for better flowers
Our first example is Wisteria. It’s pruned twice a year, and the summer prune reduces vigour, opens up the plant to more airflow and allows energy to go to ripening next years flowering buds.
Weigela is pruned in the summer after flowering, and you take out 20% of the old wood to promote new flowering growth for next spring.
Summer pruning fruit trees for health and form
Apples are generally speaking winter pruned, but if you want to restrict the size of your apple tree, or have a fan or espalier trained apple tree then you will want to prune in the summer. Pruning a normal apple tree in the summer is likely to reduce the amount of fruit you get, but this might not be a bad thing if you struggle through-out the year with hundreds of fallen apples you can’t deal with!
Plums and other stone fruits are always pruned in summer and never in winter. This is to avoid a disease called Silver leaf. Make sure to prune these in summer to promote the good health of your fruit trees.
Deadheading for more flowers
Deadheading is a type of pruning where you remove the flowers to stop the plant sending all its energy into making seedheads and instead putting out new flowering buds. A great example of this is on Roses.
When deadheading Roses, you don’t want to just take the flower how-ever, you want to cut down a little further with sharp secatuers to the next leaf joint. The new flowers will come from there, and any stem left between that and the flower will die, so this helps keep it tidier and encourage better flowering.
The “Hampton Court Hack”
You may have heard of the ‘Chelsea Chop’ – when you are encouraged to cut down certain herbaceous perennials to get a second flush of flowers. The Hampton Court Hack is a similar technique employed around the time of the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show!
Where I am, I often find that most of the recommended things like hardy geraniums are only just getting into serious flowering and don’t need any pruning and until much later. So instead I carry out the “Hampton Court Hack” or “Hampton Hack”.
This is when I’d take the shears to hardy Geraniums, perennial salvias if they are starting to go over such as Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’. ‘Caradonna’ responds well to this, but I tend to prune out individual finished flowering stems than using shears.
Astrantias also respond well to the hack. I would always recommend giving these plants a bit of a feed at the same time, be it with a compost mulch around the base, some liquid feed (tomato feed is perfect) or fish, blood and bone.
If you are in need of some summer pruning guidance in the buckinghamshire area, please give me a call today on 07546750985 or email ben@mallowgardens.co.uk