Pruning Tips from the Hacienda Pinilla Landscaping Team

Pruning Tips from the Hacienda Pinilla Landscaping Team

Pruning Ornamentals and Trees

Pruning can be defined as the suppressing of any part of the plant (leaves, branches, roots, buds, flowers, etc.) according to the grower’s criteria to obtain a specific safety, health, aesthetic or productivity result. In ornamental plants, the aesthetic reasons tend to refer to size, shape and flower and/or fruit production.

In principle, plants do not need pruning. In nature, plants live and perpetuate themselves perfectly without need of pruning. We prune them to make them adapt to our liking or needs: to give more or more beautiful flowers, produce more fruit or take on a specific shape or size, or to keep them from being a hazard, etc. All pruning, then, has a goal and a set of proper techniques for achieving that goal; some are general and others are specific, depending on the species, phenology, condition, etc. It is understood, then, that we shouldn’t prune just to prune, and we shouldn’t do it if we don’t know the proper technique for that particular goal and species. No pruning is better than poor pruning.

Types of Pruning

There are three basic types of pruning that correspond to the three stages of plant life:
1. Formative Pruning. This is the pruning practiced during the plant’s juvenile phase. It is perhaps the most important pruning, since what it seeks is for the plant to develop an adequate structure that it will likely keep throughout its lifetime. It can also be done to speed up growth. It should be done as early as possible and can be prolonged over a few years. In general, these pruning cuts will be moderate; quite often they are done during the vegetative season.

2. Maintenance Pruning. This is practiced during the plant’s mature phase. The idea of this pruning is to control and guide growth on the basic structure, delay plant aging and foster both quality and quantity of flowering in species cultivated for this purpose.

3. Rejuvenation Pruning. This is practiced on already old trees and shrubs with sparse or irregular vegetative growth and flowering. The idea is to remove the oldest and least productive parts in order to stimulate the formation of new growth. Cuts should generally not be drastic, since recovery from the cuts is not easy for the plant in old age.

A special case is that of renewal pruning practiced on those individual plants that have lacked steady maintenance pruning or have grown too much with a consequent loss of beauty or production. Drastic pruning cuts are usually made in these cases for the plant to regenerate completely.

Another special type of pruning is done with a very specific purpose: that of transplant pruning. If you want to transplant a plant that is in the ground, you lose part of its root ball when you remove it from its location, as it is impossible to remove it completely, especially when the plant has reached a certain size. Since the plant has lost much of its root system, it is out of balance, since the smaller number of roots is unable to sustain and feed all of the aerial part. The aerial part needs to be pruned more or less in proportion to the root loss.

Pruning Season
There is no specific, proper pruning season since there are many types of pruning and plants. In our case we practice the three types of pruning described above, carrying out the following process:

Renewal Pruning: This pruning is done at a height of 50 cm during the rainy season, once a year, in order to get new shoots and have better plant quality in the summer (dry season), especially with jasmine, ixora, four o’clock and narcissus plants.
The pruning is done manually with pruning shears at 50 cm above ground level; the pruned material is immediately raked up and the area is blown off, removing any weeds until the area is left clean.

Maintenance Pruning: This pruning is done on all the garden designs every 22 days in order to maintain the required aspect according to the area’s design. The cuts are made at about 90 cm above ground level with a pruner; the pruning waste is immediately collected and the area is then blown off until clean.

Tree and Palm Pruning: This is done to prevent branches from damaging the roofs in the residential areas (roofs, walls, etc.) and to keep animals from entering. The pruning is done once a month with a long-handled machete and an extension saw, using a ladder to reach the tips.

Sanitation Pruning: This is done to remove dead, diseased or broken buds and branches that take away from the plant aesthetically; it is done as needed using manual pruning shears.

Vetiver Pruning: This task is performed using a trimmer to keep the grass growing at its best and prevent it from interfering with the condominium’s security perimeter.

To sum up, as explained above pruning is a process that consists of removing plant parts that are unnecessary or unaesthetic or that hinder production. This is one of the most controversial points among the different people involved in urban plant cover management, since ideally pruning should not be needed and this is achieved only with good planning. Careful planning of the planting at least ensures that no individual plant will need frequent pruning.