Re: Cutting back, was acquiring podranea

Jan Smithen wrote:

> Moira,
> 
> More "good gardener" advice has come from you (or your book, but I suspect
> you) as off-hand or by-the-way! Some time ago you mentioned cutting hard
> back an abutilon "in order to rejuvenate it". So, this last spring (late)
> with loppers in hand, I ventured hard onto my poor scale-invested Abutilon
> 'Mt. Vesuvius', cutting it low beyond the scale.
> You should see it now, mid-summer, hot west exposure exploding, no erupting
> in firey red. Thanks, and I wonder what other woody plants the rest of you
> have discovered will take this drastic amputation?
> 
Hi Jan
Delighted to hear it worked so well.
In my experience a majority of shrubs can be rejuvenated by heavy
cutting if necessary. This is particularly true of those with a
"thicket" style of growth, regularly producing new shoots from a
ground-level or buried crown, where one can always remove a few of the
oldest ones each year, but it can be appied equally well to a number of
others which grow lots of shoots from an above-ground stem like the
Abutilon and also some you might not think of, like Camellias for
instance. There are a few in this latter catergory like  Fuchsias the
common Buddlea and Weigela (and if it comes to that, roses) which flower
in summer and only on new wood grown in the current season. If these are
not cut back to a framwork of older sturdy growth before their spring
grow thay produce more and more smaller and smaller twigs until the
flowering becomes so poor and the bush so huge they are scarcely worth
growing.

On the other hand if you cut _spring-flowering_ shrubs any time after
their next flower buds have started to develop (as early as the late
summer for many) you may get a nice healthy bush with lots of fresh
young growth but you will never see any flowers! The rule for these is
cut back as soon as the flowers have faded.

There are a number of books which will help you find out which is which.
Sunset once produced a particularly helpful one, but the clues I have
suggested, like observing when the bush flowers, will allow you to
decide what to do with most plants simply by common sense and
observation.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule and if you for instance go 
cutting members of the Protea family hard at any time of year you will
just end up with a lot of dead wood.

I think the simplest way to find out whether it is safe to hard prune
any shrub you are not sure about is to chose a branch which you don't
mind losing and cut this back before spring growth starts. If it fails
to sprout you should be very wary of pruning other branches more than
enough to remove spent flower heads.

Moira

Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
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