When, Why and How to Prune Lavender

welcome to Garden sanity I'm Laura and this video covers when why and how to prune lavender first I'll go over when to prune lavender what time of year is best and share a few important reasons why pruning lavender on a regular basis is important next I'll demonstrate exactly how to prune Lavender in a few easy steps and finally I'll show you an unpruned overgrown lavender with many large Woody stems which is an excellent almost extreme example of what regular pruning helps to avoid trust me you'll be amazed at the woodiness of this lavender it's awful [Music] so when is the best time to prune lavender you actually have a few options to choose from one of the best times to prune Lavender is late summer or early fall at least six weeks before the first Frost occurs in your area for me here in zone 7 Southern New Jersey I can still do that now even though it is the end of September the flowers are finished blooming and I can cut these back to get them ready for the winter season now some gardeners will do their pruning in mid-summer when harvesting their lavender for drying if you've already passed the window to prune now in the fall because your first Frost is fast approaching don't fret because another good time to prune Lavender is in the spring especially if you live in a colder Northern Area the steps for spring pruning are quite similar to pruning in the fall and I'll explain that in a moment as much as it's tempting to let your lavender grow and get larger it's more important to give your lavender a good pruning at least once a year choose when you want to prune your lavender and mark it on your calendar if you need to if lavender isn't cut back annually the stems can grow leggy and flop onto the ground leggy stems can also occur if the plant isn't in full sun also if the plant becomes large and overgrown any of the stems not getting sun which is usually the lower stems will become leggy as well now why are these leggy stems important because leggy stems can develop a woody base and new lavender growth will not grow out of that wood at all let me show you what I mean here's a lavender stem with a very Woody base you'll see that indeed there is live growth that has grown out from the wood but there isn't any fresh growth that will develop on the Woody part itself now let's look at the greenish gray part of the stems if I didn't prune any of these stems back as they mature the green soft stem will become Brown and Woody so that's how you get leggy Woody stems yes your lavender will still continue to grow and thrive in many cases if it hasn't been pruned back hard over the years but your lavender just won't look good when it's not in bloom how do I know because this is exactly what happened to my own lavender plants in my front yard garden beds and stay tuned because I'm going to show you exactly how bad they are right now in terms of being Woody it's pretty amazing and not in a good way foreign so the tools needed for printing your lavender are very simple you can use hand pruners or garden Snips and if you have many plants you can make quick work by using hedge trimmers and also use gloves now if you have large plants like I do in the front yard make sure to wear long sleeves to avoid getting scratched as some of the stems can be rather stiff I'm using this lavender phenomenal plant to show you how to prune lavender and this pruning Works no matter which type of lavender you have as an aside I love lavender phenomenal because it can handle weather extremes better than any other lavender it handles heat and humidity flawlessly and it remains evergreen or ever gray as many gardeners call it during the winter season even when snow gets dumped on it it doesn't get crushed so what's the goal with printing lavender well it's to remove the dead stems and dried flowers plus some of the living stems cutting the lavender down to a nice small dome-shaped Mound printing in this way reduces the chance of any Woody base becoming a problem so there will be a small Woody base at the very bottom of the stems to see what it looks like if you gently pull the plant apart you'll see it like I'm showing you here now these lavender plants were planted last year so they're only a couple of years old and I'm determined not to let them develop Woody stems first remove the dead stems it's as simple as grabbing a bunch of dead stems with one hand and just cutting them off the plant including some of the healthy living green growth underneath the dead stems you don't have to be super precise with removing the stems because this is only the first step in cutting your lavender back second examine your lavender plant and determine the shape you want to achieve some gardeners will prune them into a dome shape think of like a half circle others will cut them into more of a rounded shape it's totally up to you personally I really don't fuss that much with wanting a perfect shape because plants don't grow in perfect shapes in the wild so just keep that in mind so how far should you cut down into the plant I cut the lavender down leaving about two or three inches at the most of the Green living stems that are above the Woody base of those same stems now that you cut some of the plant back already you can get a better look to determine where exactly the Woody base ends and the new or current growth begins once you find where that is go up the stem a bit and anywhere from one to three inches cut above that as you prune keep the middle slightly higher than the sides aiming for that Dome shape that I mentioned the outside perimeter of the plant can be as little as just one inch of green growth above the Woody base of the stems shape it as best you can and remember again what I said plants don't grow in perfect shapes in the wild so don't fret too much about pruning these perfect shapes now the most important point about pruning lavender is this don't be afraid of pruning too much thinking you might damage the plant most people actually do not prune their lavender as hard as they should as long as you don't cut the plants back into the wood you'll be fine and as long as you leave at least an inch of healthy stems up to two or three inches of healthy stems at the most in the center your lavender will grow back nicely pruning encourages fresh growth it encourages the roots underground to develop and the fresh growth will become bushy and full depending on the lavender variety and there are many of them your lavender May grow large and wide or it may stay small and compact either way you want to really cut it down hard every fall or Every Spring again determine when it's best for you speaking of spring if you're pruning in the spring there's a couple of things to remember first prune in early to mid-spring however to be sure you're not cutting into dead wood especially with lavender varieties that are not Evergreen for you in the winter wait to prune until you begin to see new growth on your plants this way you'll be able to tell the difference between the healthy part of the stems versus the dead wood so that you don't cut down into the dead wood by accident once you're seeing New Growth do all of the same steps that I showed you for the fall pruning so when do I prune as I showed you I prune in the fall but I'm also going to give these plants a good look in the spring too I may trim them lightly in the spring not to be overly anal about the pruning but after seeing how badly my Lavender in the front yard became with limited pruning over the years I don't want to go through that ever again so for me a hard pruning in the late summer or early fall and then a lighter Trim in the early spring if needed that's what I'm going to do I'll show you that Woody Lavender in a second but first I want to mention fertilizer very quickly fertilizer is the final step you may want to do lavender doesn't need a lot of fertilizer as it grows best actually in lean soil not rich soil however adding some slow release organic fertilizer around the perimeter of each plant will nourish the soil over time without any harm to the lavender plants I use a Sperma plant tone for this purpose but there are several good options available okay time to see some excellent examples of horrible Woody lavender plants and they're growing in my own Gardens in the front yard first here's a quick look at the pretty knockout roses and the lavender phenomenal in the same bed so these lavender phenomenal plants were planted in 2014 when we had our Landscaping transformed from a green grass front yard to landscape pavers and garden beds the three small lavender plants that flanked each side of the front entrance steps grew quite a bit large over time especially since I wasn't pruning them back hard I thought I'd let them grow because I loved how they looked getting larger and larger over the years and then when they began to show a lot of wood it was too late all I could do was cut them back each year but the wood continued to look worse and worse and get bigger and bigger here's the one side that I haven't cut back yet just so you see again with the dried flowers and Stems look like still on the plant and here's the other side which I pruned a few weeks ago it's bad right some of this almost looks like odd-shaped topiary plants but like someone failed at topiary School that would be me besides the wood that developed over time the plants have really spread out mainly from the horizontal Woody stems and some of those Woody stems actually look like small trunks so two years ago I did try an experiment that failed I planted some new small lavender plants in between these thinking once they were doing well I just remove all of the old plants but this didn't work because the large plants and the tall flower stems just kept the new plants in the shade and those new plants eventually died off so these plants will come out and I'd like to start again and do it right this time just like I'm doing with the lavender in my backyard now and I'll keep you posted on what I decide to do if I take them out now or I decide to wait until spring and I hope that these overgrown plants didn't horrify you too much it's pretty scary but I'm keeping it real and showing you my mistakes which is part of learning how to be a better Gardener so leave any questions in the comments and until next time happy gardening

Channel: Garden Sanity

Views: 897,465

Keywords: how to prune lavender, pruning lavender, lavender pruning, cutting back lavender, lavender pruning video, lavender pruning guide, when to prune lavender, why prune lavender, prune lavender, prune lavender in fall or spring, pruning phenomenal lavender, lavender phenomenal, lavender phenomenal care, phenomenal lavender, phenomenal lavender plants, growing phenomenal lavender, lavender plant, New Jersey garden, gardening for beginners, zone 7 gardening, woody lavender

Id: WYhJDX4soDs

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022