Pruning 101
Pruning is both a skill and an art. The skill is in making proper cuts that will heal well. The art is in making cuts in the right places so that the plant will develop its potential beauty or produce an optimum crop. No matter how much or how little pruning you do on an established plant, the objective is to modify the plant’s growth. The modification can be done to maintain plant health by removing dead, diseased or injured wood, to control or direct growth and to increase quality or yield of flowers or fruit.
To understand how to approach the pruning of any plant, you need to know how growth occurs. Since all growth originates in buds, they are the first plant parts to consider. The terminal growth bud develops at the end of a stem or branch. This bud causes the stem to grow in length. Lateral buds grow along the sides of stems. These buds produce the sideways growth that makes a plant bushy. In some plants, there may be latent buds or buds that lie dormant beneath the bark. These will grow after pruning or when injury removes the actively growing part of the stem.
During the season of active growth, terminal buds draw plant energies to themselves and grow, adding length to the stems. This flow of plant energy to a terminal bud is caused by hormones called auxins that are produced within the bud. But if you cut or nip off any growing terminal bud, the steam or branch ceases growing. When you remove the bud, one or more buds below it will begin to produce auxins and thus will draw plant energy. All the kinds of pruning cuts should be made just above some growth.
There are four ways to prune. These are pinching, heading back, thinning and shearing. Pinching is the first opportunity you have to control or direct plant growth. This method is used to remove new growth before it elongates into new stems. This is especially useful with young plants that you want to make bushier. Conversely, if you want your plant to gain height, keep side growth pinched back so that the terminal buds on the main stem continues to elongate. Heading back or cutting back take advantage of the same growth principle which is growth elongates in one direction until it is stopped. The difference is that in heading back, you cut off lengths of stem already grown instead of removing buds before it can grow into stems. Heading back may be done to remove weak or unproductive wood, to encourage growth in the direction that you want, to stimulate fruit or flower production, to prevent wind or snow damage to very long or heavy branches and as a way to revitalize a plant. Thinning is an extreme form of heading back because instead of removing parts of a stem, you remove the entire stem or branch. Shearing is the only form of pruning that can be called indiscriminate. Shearing is the process that maintains the even surfaces of formal hedges and topiary work. Because the plants that normally are used for these purposes have buds and branches that are close together on their stems, every cut will be close to a growing point.
