How to Prune Nursery Trees
Every nursery tree requires pruning so that it can use its resources to grow new leaves. Pruning also gives the plant a chance to shed the overgrown dead parts. It helps to get rid of unproductive parts as well as the ones that are disease infested and overcrowded. Removing the unsightly parts of a tree, bush or shrub gives it a lively new shape and enough sunlight by removing larger branches.
Items Needed:
- Hand-held Pruning Shears, Electric Pruning Shears
- Gardening Gloves
Background about Pruning:
- Pruning is best done once a year for younger trees but this reduces with age. The process starts in the tree nursery to ensure that they are healthy and productive during planting. Tree nurseries are important for propagating plants and taking care of them until they reach the transplantation stage in the consumers preferred place.
- Nurseries provide conditions that are favorable for young trees to grow away from the harsh weather, temperature, draught, diseases and pests. These trees may overstay in the nursery due to lack of demand and hence they require pruning to keep them strong, healthy and to keep them from overgrowing. To ensure that you have healthy young plants that will do well once they are transplanted you are required to start pruning them in the nursery.
How to Prune:
- Cut off any dead leaves. Trees in the nursery are quite young hence, if they have dead parts, then that is a sign of poor development or disease infestation. That is why you should cut them off and monitor the growth of the new ones.
- Remove any buds that shoot at the base of the plant to remain with one strong shoot so that you ensure that the plant develops a central stem that naturally grows stronger and productive.
- Ensure the plant has a healthy and bright bark by trimming overcrowded shoots that make the bark and stem exhausted and unsightly. This exposes the stem and the remaining shoots to sufficient sunlight and prevents severe pest infestation and mechanical injury.
- Cut off the stub if the plant since it is a sign of no further growth. Doing this will allow a new shoot to grow with a chance expansion. Cut it down to the base where it joins the stem.
- Shape while still in the nursery because during this period they demand less work. While pruning in the nursery ensures that you create ideal spacing between the branches so that they can maintain a good and strong shape when they mature.
- Prune the low-lying branches since they are important for a young developing plant. However, the plant does not need them after transplantation in an open field since they are extra leaves for the plant to feed. Therefore, ensure you prune them when the plant is almost due for transplanting.