How To (or Should You ? ) Prune Hydrangeas in Early Spring

well hello and welcome to over the vest nurseries on a rather windy and also quite overcast day in early spring you know one of the neat things about having our youtube channel is that besides telling you about all sorts of fabulous plants that you can grow in your garden is that we also get to answer some neat questions and lately quite a few of those questions have been revolving around hydrangeas and the pruning of them for instance beth and katie both ask if it's okay to prune their hydrangeas now in early spring and the answer to that is yes but a qualified yes i'll explain better in a moment but first can i suggest that you click and subscribe to this channel because we're busy posting new videos all the time and as we post them you'll be automatically circulated with them in your feed and can i ask you to do me a favor and click the like button every now and then too that will help other viewers find the videos and as always assuming of course that you like what i'm telling you and the reason why i gave it a qualified yes is that not all hydrangeas are the same in fact there's about seven different types or categories that we commonly grow here in this region but for pruning purposes you can divide them very simply into two different types ones that flower on the current year's growth and those that flower on the growth that was made last season now these the ones that sometimes people refer to as flowering on the old wood are ones that made their flowers in the buds during the latter part of the summer and in the fall then they went dormant during the winter time and now in spring just when the buds are beginning to wake up and open inside these buds is a tiny little embryonic flower bud that will then grow out and flower in the earlier part of this summer and guess what if we were to cut those off now we would be cutting off flowers and you don't want to do that in fact this type which includes the oak leaf hydrangea which is leaves like an oak leaf the mountain hydrangeas that are less cap types and very hardy and really good plants and then these types which are known as the macrophyllas means big leaves are sometimes also referred to as mop head varieties now they are the ones that come from flowers that can be changed from pink to blue and blue back to pink they also come in white and red shades too incidentally and they have these big distinctive rounded flowers and this is probably the most popular hydrangea today but one that really you don't need to prune certainly not in springtime and if you do want to prune them sometimes if they grow into bigger plants and you want to try and reduce the size on them a little bit or it might be that you want to rejuvenate some growth if you want to do that you do it when they finish flowering and that's when i'll be able to show you another video that will deal with that then but for now in early spring this type that flowers on the growth that was made last summer you do not prune on the other hand the other type is the one that flowers on the current year's growth and they're the ones that we print now i'm sure you recognize them they're very distinctive these are the ones that have these big cone-shaped flowers during the summer time they can be a pale green color more often they're a creamy white and sometimes towards the latter end of the summer going into the fall these flowers will take on really delightful pink and even red shades too the neat thing about these is that they're very hardy and easy to grow anywhere in our region and we're very fond of them it's amazing how popular this type has become there's another native hydrangea too that's called hydrangea arborescens hydrangea annabelle is a good example invincible spirit incredible all of those are descended from this species that grows from new york all the way down to florida again very hardy very reliable carries its flowers on the young growth but instead of having cone shaped flowers they tend to be round shades and always whites or pink and slightly red shades never blue so you can easily tell the difference between the shape of the flower when they flower and if you're in doubt check with your local garden center experts they'll be able to tell you exactly which ones you have and when you should prune them and if you look at these plants you'll see that they have carried their all flowers from last year on growth that was made during the entire season last summer so this plant has to grow out in springtime and the early part of the summer set its flowers then during the summer and that will carry it through into the fall too so obviously the more young growth that we create on this plant or this type of hydrangea the more floriferous they're going to be the bigger the flowers will be and the better the display so beth and katie if this is the type you have then you can prune these in early spring in fact it's a good thing to do but i also should mention that if you're not sure which ones that you have hold off on pruning wait for them to flower and then you'll be able to decide whether you should prune them next spring or not and if you do want to prune them here's how you do it and for this all you need is a good sharp pair of pruners and some sort of receptacle to put the prunings in now as i say i'm doing this in early spring that's my favorite time but really these are so hardy you could do it earlier than this if you wish you could do it in late fall even in milder periods during the winter time i like doing it now in early spring because at least you're able to enjoy something of the flowers during the winter time and you're doing it now just as the buds are beginning to open and that means that you're going to look at the cutback plant for the shortest possible time so the first thing to do is to look over the plant and see if there's any dead parts if there's any bits left over from last year and i see a few bits here from pruning wounds and things like that you can take those out because that material is dead anyway and it's not going to do any good so just snip out any dead bits that are on there and that then allows you to take a look at the rest of the plant and decide what you want to do with it now the thing i like to do is to cut back all these weak spindly stems quite hard i'll trim those back to usually a set of buds or so because really small spindly growth in the inside of the plant is really not that much benefit i also see what's a dead piece there if there's any crossing pieces you can take those out too and then look for any damage shoots now i don't know if you can see it or not but you see this one here where perhaps wind or something has got in here and it has partially broken this branch here and obviously that's not going to be a strong joint so therefore that's one that i would take out and in fact as you go around your plant if you see any that are damaged like that take it out because it's not really going to be structurally sound and then if you go in through here and see here's another spindly shoot you're looking really just to try and open up the center of the plant here's another shoot that's likely to be crossing so i'm going to take that out too the idea is really to build up a nice open shape that's kind of vase shape or bowl shape like this so you're looking to try and keep the center of the plant nice and open so that light and air is able to get in all over and all around the plant now look for any wood that's going to be crossing that's likely to be rubbing against each other during the growing season and you see these two shoots here where my thumb and finger is you'll see how these are going to be rubbing against each other so we need to take one of those out and i would suspect that this one here growing towards the middle is the one to take out so that stops it from rubbing i'm also going to shorten this one back to about there and that will then create when in fact that can go a little further because that will now make some growth that will come out from the middle so then when you've removed the three ds the dead damaged in any diseased wood though thankfully these varieties are really remarkably disease resistance and therefore there's no issues going on here with that but any dead damaged or diseased wood that comes out remove and shorten back any thin spindly shoots and then you're left as you see here with the main fabric of the plant and with these the main structural branches of the plant the rule of thumb generally is to remove about a third of the growth now i have to say that i'm tend to be a little bit more aggressive than many other people i love the way these things grow out so nice and strongly and produce these big gorgeous flower heads so i tend at times to be a little bit more aggressive than that but if you start out by taking say a third of the growth back then you can always go in if you want and shorten them back even more but you just go in as you see and go around the plant and remove about a third of the growth and in no time at all you'll be able to see a nice big strong healthy vigorous plant now here's a shoot incidentally take a look at this here's a shoot that's growing from one side of the plant back into the middle of the plant now you could certainly shorten this down to a third but in my case what i like to do is just take it out completely and that helps as i say to open up the plant now here's another branch look at this one look here see how it's rubbing back and forward and in fact on this branch here you'll see that it's really already begun to open up the possibly a place here for some damage or disease so obviously we have to do something about that now this shoot here is growing in an outward direction that's good this one here is kind of coming from the middle of the plant and there's a nice big juicy chute here anyway going off in this direction so in that case what i'm going to do is to take this one back right back here to the base of the stem and that will eliminate the crossing and then this branch here will be able to grow out and flower which i see i've already pruned now you'll see that on this plant there are some of the lower branches here that are growing out and having flowers that are going to touch the ground and obviously what we want to do is to try to encourage growth that's going to be more showy and up off the ground so in that case i'm probably going to take this one back quite hard there's a little short twiggy growth there that's going to be crossing too and here's another one down at the base so i'll take that back quite severely then gradually as you see i'm working away my way around the plant until you get to some of these shoots here and the question is where do you prune well we said about take a third off that would be about here but let me show you where you actually prune the make the pruning cut now i don't know if it matters that much but generally they say that you should prune just above a bud node those i don't know if you can see it or not but these are the little buds breaking out on the stem here and if you prune just above those that's where the stem is a little stronger and i'm sometimes believe that with things that are hollow stemmed like these plants you sometimes can get water and disease in the pruning wound and where there's a bud node it's a little tougher a little sturdier there and that helps to just stop any die back that you might get from some of the shoots whenever you trim them back so then as you see it's really just a matter of working your way around the plant shortening back any of the shoots that are on there taking about a third or maybe at times a little more than that back on the plant and cutting above a node and that way you'll then have a nice strong vigorous growing plant that's well shaped and one that's going to produce lots of flowers during the growing season so that's how you prune the varieties that grow and flower on the current year's growth and then it's just a matter really of going around and catching any last minute bits that you didn't get earlier on i see here's one that i need to shorten back just a little bit like so and in no time at all you're going to have a nicely shaped plant with lots of strong vigorous growth that's going to grow out this spring and then carry its gorgeous flowers this summer and there's just one final thing that i like to do and that is because you've pruned it back and it's now poised to put on a lot of good strong growth it's a good idea to put down some fertilizer and that will help to sustain the growth and keep it going during the year now it really doesn't matter what kind of fertilizer you use as long as it's a good balanced formulation i like to use this slow release fertilizer because it is what i call a one-shot deal and as you see very scientifically i sprinkle about a handful or so around the perimeter of the plant and then just gently work it in with a rick like so and then because it's a slow release fertilizer it will keep on working during the growing season and that will sustain plenty of growth so there you are beth and katie that's how you prune this type of hydrangea the one that grows out and flowers on the current year's growth and if you've got some that have those pink and blue colored flowers on them the mop head types the other ones i mentioned don't prune those just these type this is david wilson enjoy your gardening it's good for us and it's very good for our environment too you

Channel: Overdevest Nurseries

Views: 621,522

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Id: Z6STEztMaAQ

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021