Pruning is a useful practice for the health of many plant species that brings great benefits to trees, bushes, shrubs, but also climbers and flowering plants.
In particular, when tree or shrub species are organized and structured to form hedges, pruning represents an indispensable maintenance technique.
Performing precise and regular pruning is the most effective way to control the shape and size, stimulate the growth of new robust and thick branches, ensure the hedges look healthy and pleasant.
In fact, in many cases, the hedges represent the frame that enhances the lawn, the flowers and all the items that we will place in our garden.
How to prune hedges
The pruning of the hedges consists essentially in the accurate removal of dry or damaged branches, or showing an irregular growth.
As these parts of the plant compromise their general health or appearance, it is necessary to remove them by cutting in the best way.
For this reason, proper pruning is one of the most important operations of the entire cultivation process.
The cutting of the perimeter hedges, whose function is above all divisory, serves mainly to define with greater precision the boundaries and avoid that the plant grows too high.
To ensure a precise and straight horizontal cut, a wire must be stretched along the direction to be followed, fixed to two pegs placed at the ends of the hedge.
Vertically, it is advisable to extend the cut while proceeding from top to bottom, to ensure the right amount of light even at the bottom of the hedge.
Instead, the hedges that are inside the gardens are very often characterized by geometric shapes or three-dimensional drawings.
To obtain this purely decorative result, it is necessary to subject them to artistic pruning that requires a lot of experience and a certain mastery.
What to do after hedge trimming
It is important to consider that pruning, even if it is carried out to keep the hedges healthy, is a traumatic event for the plants.
In fact, the cutting of the branches leaves open wounds that can favor the onset of diseases, infections and mycosis.
For this reason, after pruning the hedges, it is important to perform a fungicide treatment based on the common verdigris.
Then it is necessary to free the surrounding soil from the weeds, manually or with a natural herbicide, and to fertilize the soil with an organic fertilizer specific for the stimulation of the vegetative activity and the protection from harmful fungi.
When to prune hedges
There is no universally valid rule for determining the most suitable period for hedge trimming.
However, you can make a distinction based on the type of plants that make them up.
For example, most flower hedges, such as Ligustro, benefit from pruning at the end of flowering, in late spring.
Other particularly robust shrubby species such as laurel require pruning in winter.
On the contrary, the evergreen or deciduous hedges are to be pruned both in spring and at the end of the warmer months.
Finally, the coniferous hedges can be pruned according to the needs, also several times during the year.
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