Best Time to Prune a Redbud & a Quickfire Hydrangea?

Ed in Canton asks, ‘I have two questions and both of them deal with pruning. I have an eastern red bud tree. When would be the best time to prune back some branches that might be either real thin or just sort of not growing?’

Okay. So this is a great time to prune it. If you prune it right now, you may cut some of the buds off, the flower buds. Some people will let it bloom and then as soon as it’s done blooming, they’ll trim it. That way you get to enjoy the flowers that are on those branches that you’re going to take off.

But there’s a very short window. As soon as it’s done flowering, it starts to push its leaves. You do not want to let it fully push its leaves and then trim it. That stresses it. Some people do it early right now before the flowers are fully formed on those branches. It’s not a big deal if you do it now, but you do want to do it before the leaves fully come out.

‘The second pruning question, I have a hydrangea. Not sure of the name of it. Something fire. It changes colors. Quick fire?’

Quickfire, yes, that’s in the paniculata family. So you can trim it right now. What you don’t want to do with that one is prune it after the new growth has come on because you’ll be cutting the flower heads off. But right now, it’s still in its dormant state.

You may start to see the buds swell this next week over the 70 degree temperatures we’re going to have, but you can prune it right now. Now is the perfect time to prune any of the paniculata varieties.

Now is a really good time to prune stuff like your Japanese maples and things like that because you can see the branch structure. You can actually see the structure of the plant. And the first thing I always take off is, the first thing when you’re pruning, dead wood always comes off first. Get the dead wood off. It’s not doing anything positive for the tree. The next set of branches that we’ll take off are what we call crossing branches.

If a branch comes out of the trunk and crosses back through the tree, we want to take those crossing branches out. We want everything to develop off the main trunk and come straight out. So if you have crossing branches, that’s the next thing we take out. Then we step back, take a look at the overall shape of the plant, and then we’ll selectively prune some branches to give it the shape that we’re after. But dead and crossing branches have to come out first.

Certain varieties of hydrangea will, what we call stretch, and they will send up two, three feet of growth. It’s okay to take that back. And even depending on the variety of hydrangea, but all the paniculata varieties, you can pretty much take them back by half. You’re not going to hurt that plant. Again, anytime you’re pruning, fertilize with that all season fertilizer.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).