Madison Messenger - April 18th, 2021

PAGE 10 - MADISON MESSENGER - April 18, 2021
www.madisonmessengernews.com
140 S. Main St., London, OH 43140 • (740) 845-1543
BEAT THE
SPRING
RUSH
25% OFF
Bulk Mulch
Delivery Charge with
presentation of
this ad
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR
TO GET YOUR MOWER
TUNED UP!
QUICK TURN
AROUND ON
REPAIRS!
FREE local pickup and delivery until May 1 st
The SPRING SPECIAL!
Zero Zero Turn Turn . . . . Riders.................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 199.99 $239.99
.
*single cylinder
tractor
Riding Small Tractor Engine Service Riders............. . . . . . . . . . . .
$ 159.99 $174.99
Push Push Mower Mowers......................... Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 59.99 79.99
Check out our Pre-owned Equipment Page at
www.greenskeepersales.com
Know when to prune
spring-blooming shrubs
By Jane Kutzley
Madison County Master Gardener
Question: My forsythia shrub looks big and
healthy, but it had very few blooms this spring.
It was gorgeous last year. What happened?
If your shrub appears to be healthy,
other than the lack of blooms, then it was
probably pruned at the wrong time of year.
Knowing when to prune flowering shrubs is
important. If done at the wrong time, the
blooms will be eliminated or greatly reduced
in number.
Some shrubs bloom on old wood. Forsythia
is one example. This means that the
shrub sets its blooms for the next year
shortly after blooming this year. So, up to
nine or 10 months before it blooms, even
though you can’t actually see it, a forsythia
has started to develop blooms for the next
spring. By the time it actually blooms, the
branches are nearly a year old and are considered
old wood.
When pruning shrubs that bloom on old
wood, it is critical not to prune between the
time the buds are set and the time it actually
flowers. That means that there is only
a small window of time shortly after the
shrub blooms when it can be pruned without
worry about reducing next year’s
blooms.
Other shrubs bloom on new wood. Butterfly
bush and button bush are two examples.
These set their buds shortly before
they bloom, so the branches are younger
and the time from bud set to bloom is much
shorter. New wood shrubs can be pruned
much later in the season without reducing
the quantity of blooms.
A general rule of thumb is that springflowering
shrubs bloom on old wood while
summer flowering shrubs bloom on new
wood. There are exceptions, of course, and
just to make things even more interesting,
some families of shrubs have members that
bloom on old wood and others that bloom on
new wood. Hydrangea macrophyllum
(bigleaf hydrangea) blooms on old wood but
Hydrangea arborescens (smooth hydrangea)
and Hydrangea paniculata (panicled hydrangea)
bloom on new wood. Spirea is another
example. Spring-blooming spirea
blooms on old wood. Summer-blooming
spirea blooms on new wood.
A quick Internet search will tell you
whether your shrub blooms on old or new
wood. If you don’t know what kind of shrub
you have and you want to have as many
blooms as possible, then limit your pruning
to the month after your shrub finishes its
annual bloom cycle. Then there’s no need to
worry about old or new wood. However, you
must resist the urge to “neaten it up” as the
season progresses.
One more interesting twist is that some
of the newer shrub cultivars bloom on both
old and new wood and are called rebloomers.
This means that whenever you
prune, you will be eliminating some blooms.
Current advice is to prune a reblooming
shrub as infrequently as possible and to do
any pruning at the end of a particularly
heavy bloom cycle.