How to Prune Shrub Bushes

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Part of the video series: How to Prune & Care for Trees & Shrubs

Summary: Learn how to prune your shrubs in your home garden in this free garden maintenance video.

Views: 2,633 | Tags: compost, plants, garden, maintenance, trees, pruning, tree, shrub, mulching, hedges, shrubs


About the Expert
Contact: safelawns.org

Scott Reil Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. He has lectured extensively and taught... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Prune Shrub Bushes

Hi! I'm Scott Reil on behalf of expertvillage.com I would like to talk to you about tree and shrub maintenance. Pruning your trees and shrubs is probably one of the best ways to help maintain them in a healthy and ecstatic way it is going to look good in your yard. Now everybody assumes when we start talking about pruning we got to break out the tool right away but there is even pruning jobs say I'm the new foliage of a blue spruce it is best handle by hand. Simply by snapping off and shorten the length and actually removing the entire candles on some of these branches I can control the length of the growth for that season simply by shutting down the growth of that particular branch. That is going to cause the tree to bud back, creating more buds back behind causing it to fill in and that is the real reason we prune. Well that is the easy way to get it but not all of them are going to be able to be done by hand sometimes you need to break out the pruners especially for woodier deciduous plants. Now my hollies got done flowering about a week ago and that is important to remember best time to prune for almost all plants is right after they have got done flowering that way you are not pruning off next years flower buds which in some cases could definitely happen. On this Hollie we could I got a few growth shooting up here now a lot of people are going to want to take a electric preadge pruner or something like that just buzz this thing right around it is one the worst ways to prune. It really doesn't make a clean cut it just haggle it up and I don't like it because it leaves a less to natural look to the shrub. I prefer to go with hand pruners and cut now I have picked this point here I have a bud right below there and I want it to grow forward so this bud is called advantages bud that would start the next series of growth out to the front. By going through and selectively pruning and you only want to prune about a quarter inch at best above that advantages bud that is going to be the next place where the tree pushes and grows from. Now by going to through and selecting just a few of the leaders on tops off of this plant I can get it back to a nice full look that looks natural, it doesn't look sheared and clipped. The tree is going to go better and healthier that way, the air is going to move through the plant because it help lighten some of it up and the plant is just going to have a natural, healthy appearance that is going to serve me well look good in my garden for years. If you prune like this your would do the same.

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