Planting Tips

Chapter 39 How to Reshape and Prune Potted Plants

Plastic pruning is one of the important means of raising flowers and trees. If all flowers and trees are allowed to grow naturally, they will lose their due ornamental value.Shaping is to make a reasonable and perfect tree shape by pruning.When shaping, on the one hand, we must follow the natural growth trend of flowers and trees, and we should also give full play to their respective characteristics, and carry out artistic processing through modeling techniques, so as to combine natural beauty and artificial beauty, so as to improve their ornamental value.

Pruning is to take different treatments on branches, leaves, buds, flower buds and roots, etc., which can not only create a good plant shape, but also regulate the reasonable distribution and supply of nutrients in the plant, prevent branches and leaves from growing excessively, and help flower bud differentiation and pregnancy. Buds; and can create good ventilation and light conditions to reduce the occurrence of pests and diseases.Flower and tree pruning mainly includes measures such as short cutting, thinning, topping, budding, bud peeling, and flower thinning.

Flower and tree plastic surgery can be roughly divided into two categories: natural style and modeling style.Natural shaping is to make the distribution of branches more reasonable and beautiful through pruning and thinning on the basis of maintaining the original plant shape.The modeling style is to force the tree shapes of flowers and trees according to people's different hobbies, without considering the habits of trees at all, forcing them to change their natural growth trends and creating various shapes.For example, bonsai shapes often force the trunk to grow horizontally or hang down.A perennial flower tree with a perfect plant shape is often not achieved by 1 or 2 times of plastic surgery, and sometimes it takes several years or even ten years of careful cultivation to achieve it.Therefore, long-term plans should be made at the early stage of plastic surgery. When plastic surgery is performed every year, one must be aware of the length of the remaining branches and the parts of the thinning branches. irreparable loss.

Before pruning potted flowers and trees, you should first have a full understanding of the flowering habits of the flowers and trees.All flowers and trees that bloom on the branches of the year, such as rose, pomegranate, hibiscus jasmine, gardenia, hypericum, etc., can be pruned again to allow them to shoot more branches, bloom, and bear fruit.For winter jasmine, rhododendron, plum blossom, green peach, magnolia, etc., which bloom in early spring, their flower buds are formed on the branches of the previous year, so they cannot be pruned before they germinate in early spring, so as not to cut off the flower buds and affect flowering and fruit setting.Pruning should be carried out within 1 to 2 weeks after flowering to promote the germination of new shoots and form flower branches for the coming year.However, five-color plums and night lilacs undergo flower bud differentiation in spring, and they can bloom after summer. They should be cut short at the end of autumn, and the new branches in the spring of the next year can bloom in summer.Pruning should be based on the principle of keeping the outside but not the inside, and keeping straight but not horizontal.

Cut off diseased dead branches, thin branches, elongated branches, cross branches, dense branches and branches that affect the plant type.The buds at the cut should be left to grow outward, and the cut should not be too close to the buds, otherwise they will easily lose water and dry up, which will affect germination.For winter coral, pomegranate, poinsettia and other flowers and trees that are prone to branching, if there are too few branches at the base of the plant, resulting in top-heavy, it can be cut short from the base of the trunk at a distance of 5-10 cm from the pot soil, allowing it to regenerate new branches and form a plump crown.Flowers and trees that are easy to branch, such as five-needle pine, camellia, and white orchid, should not be pruned casually.Flowers and trees with soft climbing branches such as winter jasmine and honeysuckle are generally not pruned, and only the old and dense branches are cut off.

(End of this chapter)