My plan was to share some pruning and maintenance tips from my garden last Thursday, but we woke up to 3 inches of snow…terrible!

This weekend I was out cleaning some of my gardens and decided to share some tips, pics and videos with you on how I maintain and prune in the spring. I live in Zone 6a where we have cold and snowy winters. Step 1, it’s important to know your zone – this will help you determine what plants will survive in your climate.

Start a Garden Binder & Save Plant Tags

I plan on getting a big binder to keep all these plant tags and to also start putting in any notes I might have regarding pruning, sunlight amounts, special things to note about the plants and even maintenance required throughout blooming season.

Differentiating Flower Varieties (i.e. Hydrangeas)

We have several different varieties of hydrangea around our yard and it is very important to identify and know when and how to prune them. I have made notes about when to prune and how much to trim them down.

I will admit, when it came to pruning hydrangea in years past, I decided I wouldn’t touch them because I was nervous I would affect future blooming and leave my plant flowerless.

Last year, my brother was over in April and saw I hadn’t dead headed or done anything to my Limelight hydrangeas. He went to town and cut it down significantly. I was a little nervous the blooming would be affected, but WOW was a wrong, pruning (at the right time) is so beneficial and can help – DEPENDING on the variety you have.

In my case, most of the hydrangeas I have in my gardens are the panicle variety, meaning they grow on NEW wood. The new wood means that buds are growing on new wood/stems from the current growing season.

I have these varieties in my garden:

Limelight

Strawberry Shake

Incrediball

Pruning New Wood Varieties in Spring

You can cut these down quite a bit, but I played it conservatively this year.

How to prune:
Cut the stem at a 45 degree angle (this will make sure that any water will run off the tip of the plant instead of collecting) just above these little notches (growth buds) that you see pictured below.

Also, you can remove any twig/thin branches (you can be aggressive with this if you have a large plant like myself) it will promote bigger blooms on the thicker branches rather than wasting energy to feed the buds on those thin ones. I will probably end up cutting things WAY back depending on how they bloom this year. I didn’t thin out the plant a ton and only cut back my stems about 18″.

These Varieties Grow on Old Wood…

The other set of hydrangeas I have in my yard grow on old wood, which mean buds are formed on the wood/stem from the previous growing season. If I’m honest, this description doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, you can check out this article – but, the only thing I do know is I DO NOT prune these old wood varieties at all. The only thing I do is deadhead the spent flowers and that is it.

With the old wood variety, they do suggest trimming these back in the fall, but again, I don’t want to mess with them! Here are the ones I have around my yard – these tend to all be the Macrophylla or Mophead varieties:

Blushing Bride

Endless Summer – Blue

The Importance of Early Weeding

It is extremely important to start tackling weeds ASAP. I recently read that the best time to weed is in the spring – before the time the weeds become more established and start seeding or flowering – this is how weeds propagate. Also, the “spring showers” can help make the job a lot easier to pull weeds, along with this tool…

One thing I highly recommend is highlighted in this video below (apologies for the poor quality, was working with one hand!):

Weather permitting – I am out looking at all my garden beds daily and will carry around this tool to keep the weeds in check. My new goal this year is to look over a bed a day – tackling any weeds that pop up in the morning or at night. This routine will hopefully make things more manageable because weeds can get out of control quickly!

Other Spring Pruners in My Yard

These were some other plants that required some spring pruning as well. Just like hydrangea, there are different pruning requirements in other plants too, so if you do know what kind of plant you have or you saved the tags, make sure to double check before trimming back. Spirea, some ornamental grasses and even different types of lavender can have different pruning times.

Astilbe
I kept the spent flowers on them all winter and trimmed them to about 3 inches in early March

Spirea
The variety I have enables me to potentially get two growth cycles in a growing season. If you cut back right after their bloom in spring you can get another set of blooms for fall! All I did was trim off dead stems or flowers.

Ornamental Grasses
I cut these back with some hedge shears leaving about 5 inches on the plant. Cut these back in early March and am seeing green already!

Stay tuned for some more garden posts during this month into next. I can’t wait to share some more tips, tricks and what I’m planting with you all! Happy Monday!

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