The Basics of Pruning: Types of Pruning for Your Garden

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There are many different types of pruning, and it can be confusing to know which type to use for your garden. In this blog post, we will take a look at the different types of pruning and when you should use them. We will also provide some tips on how to get started with pruning your garden!

What to Know About Different Types of Pruning Cuts

Gardeners and their plants require haircuts from time to time. While we may not be able to bring our plants to the salon, we can give them personalized cuts, trims, and shapes at home. Pruning is as varied as there are gardeners with Shears in hand, but we’ve narrowed it down to a few basic types of pruning cuts you need to know about.

Learn about the many forms of snips available, from basic pruning to fine cuts, so that you’ll be prepared when it’s time to break out the garden shears, loppers, and saws. Find out when to trim your flowers and shrubs in your garden (including crepe myrtles!) after you’ve learned about the cuts.

Taking Cuttings

A cutting is a piece of a plant that you remove to grow a new one or share with someone else. To take off a portion of the plant, use tiny snippers. Repeat this procedure on every leaf until all are clipped.

A root pruning should be done just below a root node, which is the section of the plant that will send out roots and cause new growth to take hold. Learn how to grow plants from your new cuts once you’ve mastered the technique.

Pinching

This isn’t the same as shearing. To do it, pinch off a bud with your fingers. This is done on terminal buds to stop growth and encourage a plant to develop bushy rather than leggy. Pinching is often used on tiny shrubs and flowers to shape them and regulate their development.

Deadheading

This is a common form of pruning in the garden. According to the Penn State Extension, “Deadheading is a technique for removing old growth and seed heads from the plant to encourage new growth and re-blooming.

Deheading is straightforward. Pinch or cut off the flower stems below the spent flowers and above the first set of full, healthy leaves as blooms wilt. This process removes drooping flowers and encourages plants to focus their efforts on new development.

Thinning Cuts

Thinning eliminates the entire shoots of a plant to reduce its overall thickness of foliage. Thinning is not done to stimulate regrowth; instead, it removes whole shoots, stems, and branches that connect to larger parent branches. Thinning doesn’t usually impact the plant’s form, but it does result in fewer branches overall, resulting in better air circulation through the leaves.

Shaping Cuts

Most topiary sculptures are created by cutting plants with a specific goal in mind, such as shaping. It’s a popular approach for boxwood and evergreen plants, and it generally entails first snipping a plant into an initial rough shape before shearing and trimming for accuracy. Pruning cuts may result in different forms for the plants being pruned, but that isn’t their primary goal.

Heading Cuts

According to IFAS at the University of Florida, “A heading cut is a pruning procedure that removes only a two-year-old shoot; cutting through an older stem back to a lateral branch less than 1/3 the diameter of the cut stem; or cutting a stem to an unpruned length.” This is frequently done to remove just a portion of a shoot’s growth in order to encourage thick, dense lateral growth. It’s frequently used to slow the vertical development of trees and other plants and induce robust, abundant lateral growth.

Reduction Cuts

“Reduction cuts remove a larger branch or trunk back to a smaller-diameter side branch,” according to the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension. “Reduction cuts are frequently utilized in training young trees.”

Learning your pruning tricks

There are many types of pruning cuts that a gardener might use, depending on the goal. In this blog post, we’ve looked at some of the most common ones: snipping, root pruning, pinching, deadheading, thinning, shaping, and heading. Each type of cut has a specific purpose in mind: from encouraging new growth to removing old growth. Once you know how to do these basic cuts correctly, you can start experimenting with more advanced techniques like taking cuttings or growing plants from cuttings.

What types of pruning cuts do you use in your garden? What’s the first tool you reach for when it comes to trimming trees?