I love to see a video that shows things you can do that break. The rules improves. Nature still will recover! So many videos aren’t as honest as yours, I do what you just did on my job so often out of necessity.
I appreciate your approach to getting stuff done. It will all be ok in time. We bought a house that was v overgrown, and I just had to do it. Thanks for giving the ideal timings. Would be interested in seeing some future time points for how they’ve recovered.
this is comforting to view since I have 7 Indian Hawthornes that need to be hard prune in a landscaped area around the pool. Sounds like if I do it now, I should be fine. Thanks for your post
This is just the video I'm looking for. We have several overgrown evergreens that needs to be cut back to a nice round manicured look. They are almost touching each other. I will wait late winter to cut them dramatically. I hope they would fill in nicely.
Thanks great vid just what I needed to see - I'm buying a property with many wildly overgrown well established shrubs to tackle should have the keys within a month and can't wait to get started now, great info thanks again, love your vids always find what I'm looking for when I do a search through your archives 👍🌳
I like when scrubs are trimmed way back. It makes the landscape look more taken care of and landscaped. I'm getting ready to trim my bushes way back too!
I see that @Roxanne B and I felt the same way watching this video! For some reason, watching you mowing down those shrubs was so satisfying for some reason! I think it was because I have some shrubs that I'd love to be fearless enough to go at like that and get under control and to see you do what I'd LOVE to do to my own overgrown shrubs, was THE BEST! I have some very established LARGE evergreen shrubs right up beside my house (well over 20yrs old) and one summer I had someone cut them back (NOTHING like you just did), and there was a section of the plant that was cut down to the wood that didn't rebud out meaning, I had bare limbs twigs sticking out and I wound up cutting them off at the junction of the branch to the rest of the plant. I actually had someone cut them again just a couple of weeks ago and he did a really poor job but I THINK they may be okay because where he cut them down to the bare branch (which I told him not to do! Smh), there were a few (very few) small green spots here and there so, hopefully, it will continue to sprout out during the course of the summer and will be fine next year (hopefully).
Over the years I found that dwarf doesn't necessarily mean small. It is dwarf in the sense that it gets no where near the size of other Crape Myrtle cultivars. My dwarf topped out at eight compared to others that are over thirty feet.
You make it look so easy. I'm so tiny it'll be a challenge...but I'll try it this year. Not yet though. I still have over 100 days of summer down here lol
😲poor grape myrtle flowers😲 that is a beautiful flowering shrub. I don't think I've seen that before. I live in the U.K though so it may not be native to this country. Good video. It would be great to see a follow-up video on this. ☺
Jim, great video. I have some lorepetlum that are easily 20+ ft high. They were planted long before we purchased this home three years ago. They have beautiful lower trunks, with long thick branches that taper off to that 20+ft mark. I want to trim them back to about 5ft and see if I can’t train them into a much more manageable tree. Do you think they could handle that?
That was very painful to watch. Why not wait on the crepe myrtle until winter? That was sad. I came to this video because I had almost dying Indian Hawthorne that is probably 15 years old and just chopped them almost down to the ground. Your Indian Hawthorne were beautiful and didn't have any disease like mine. I am just going to fertilize and hope that they put out new growth. Then I will spray for disease if this works.
My eight year old wisteria is thriving well in zone 8 in north Texas but has never bloomed. Added bone meal to soil in August and watered it into soil. Gets plenty of sunshine and sprinkler waters it twice a week. Still no blooms. Plan to deep prune it in February. Cut back to third bud all over plant. Right?
When should you do a major pruning on Loropetalum? How much can you take? It was planted on my foundation. It is now way passed the windows. It probably needs to be cut down by 2/3rd or more. Can I do that in one year?
Thank you for this! I wondered if anyone might advice on a very poorly, but very precious azelea x rhod and how to prune to save her. She had an infestation of some kind of boring AND leaf munching insect. I cleared that up and moved her to a large half oak barrel BUT... I forgot to drill holes for drainage. This is now rectified and she tried her best to bloom this year but none of the buds opened. Her roots are dry and well now, but she certainly had a lot to deal with and the leaf growth that remains is somewhat yellowed/ very damaged from the leaf munchers. I know that now is the time to prune and that it is the only way back to her former glory, but how hard can i/should i go? If i defoliate her entirely, will she survive? (she is an evergreen variety). Please do chip in before I do silly things :)
oh, I can't believe what you did to that beautiful crape myrtle, LOL! I know it will be fine, but it was blooming so beautifully! Anyway, I could use some advice. I have some mature shrubs that are 12+ feet tall. They've been in for about 14 years. A couple large rhodies and a large viburnum davidii. All of them suffered damage to their lower areas due to an out-of-control himalayan blackberry problem (thankfully, that has now been resolved) and they are bare on the bottoms and not well shaped. I feel like the viburnum might leaf out on the lower areas if it's pruned back and received more sun there. I have heard you can cut back rhodies hard, but I don't know if they'll actually branch out more? These poor things don't have enough branching on them. What do you suggest?
Hello, we have overgrown arborvitae trees that I would like to severely prune. Can I stop them from branching out at the cuts? I would like to take the extra branches off of them and just have one central trunk. Do you have a video about this problem? I have lots of pictures you can use also. I do not care if I damage the trees. I really am not that fond of them. lol
I have hedges along my fence, that I just cannot figure out how to prune correctly. They look stragely and bare in center. Any tips?I dont know how to attach a picture here
I have a couple of mature sweet osmanthus that are way too tall by the front door of our new home. How aggressive can I be on pruning them down to a manageable size? They are currently about 15 feet tall and all of the growth starts about 6 feet from the ground. Please help!
Thanks for the video, I need to move a 3 year old 5ft crape myrtle bush to a different location, will it survive the move? if so when is the best time or season to do it? Thanks again!
Didn't explain why you 'had to do what you had to do' very well. Would it have been so hard to wait until the right time. Also, and I might be wrong about this, but in Australia, the name is CREPE MYRTLE.
Crepe is actually just the French spelling for the English word Crape. The national arboretum in the US introduced most of the known varieties and they spell it Crape. It is literally the least significant thing about them, but it is always the main comments on them.
Great work. I have a few skip laurel at the edge of my driveway that are about 8-9 feet tall and are so far over my driveway that I can’t park there now. I was looking to cut about 16-20 inches into the side of it but that would cut away all of the greenery and it’s on the south side where no sun hits and it’s the first week of April. Do you think it will do any severe harm to the plant.??? Thank you
I'm in NJ . How can I prune back early blooming rhododendrons that are 6 ft tall and blocking my windows in front of my house? There seems to be a bunch of growth about 1 or 2 ft at the bottom in addition to the leggy growth above. Can I cut off all the top growth and hope that the bottom stuff takes over? We are right near July 4th - can I do it now? They bloomed in probably late March.
I have cut several of my crape myrtles literally to the ground and all came back. I was then able to pick a few stems to train into a multi trunk tree rather than the bush shape they had been.
I love to see a video that shows things you can do that break. The rules improves. Nature still will recover! So many videos aren’t as honest as yours, I do what you just did on my job so often out of necessity.
I appreciate your approach to getting stuff done. It will all be ok in time. We bought a house that was v overgrown, and I just had to do it. Thanks for giving the ideal timings. Would be interested in seeing some future time points for how they’ve recovered.
I believe he moved to a new house a year ago. Since this video is from 2017, I suspect we’ll never see this yard again.
this is comforting to view since I have 7 Indian Hawthornes that need to be hard prune in a landscaped area around the pool. Sounds like if I do it now, I should be fine. Thanks for your post
what a pleasure to look at a tree that you planted 20 years ago, and you watch it grow with you. that's amazing
Thanks for watching.
This is just the video I'm looking for. We have several overgrown evergreens that needs to be cut back to a nice round manicured look. They are almost touching each other. I will wait late winter to cut them dramatically. I hope they would fill in nicely.
Thanks great vid just what I needed to see - I'm buying a property with many wildly overgrown well established shrubs to tackle should have the keys within a month and can't wait to get started now, great info thanks again, love your vids always find what I'm looking for when I do a search through your archives 👍🌳
I like when scrubs are trimmed way back. It makes the landscape look more taken care of and landscaped. I'm getting ready to trim my bushes way back too!
Oh my goodness, that beautiful Crape Myrtle! I love them
Damn he wasn’t kidding when he said he was gunna do some heavy pruning. Damn
I see that @Roxanne B and I felt the same way watching this video! For some reason, watching you mowing down those shrubs was so satisfying for some reason! I think it was because I have some shrubs that I'd love to be fearless enough to go at like that and get under control and to see you do what I'd LOVE to do to my own overgrown shrubs, was THE BEST! I have some very established LARGE evergreen shrubs right up beside my house (well over 20yrs old) and one summer I had someone cut them back (NOTHING like you just did), and there was a section of the plant that was cut down to the wood that didn't rebud out meaning, I had bare limbs twigs sticking out and I wound up cutting them off at the junction of the branch to the rest of the plant. I actually had someone cut them again just a couple of weeks ago and he did a really poor job but I THINK they may be okay because where he cut them down to the bare branch (which I told him not to do! Smh), there were a few (very few) small green spots here and there so, hopefully, it will continue to sprout out during the course of the summer and will be fine next year (hopefully).
Thank you for modeling safety with the goggles. Great video, as always.
Love the no nonsense approach!
Sometimes you gotta do, what you gotta do. Lol. Tfs. 🤗
Wow the dwarf crepe Myrtle is so tall and beautiful. Good to see how tall they really get.
Over the years I found that dwarf doesn't necessarily mean small. It is dwarf in the sense that it gets no where near the size of other Crape Myrtle cultivars. My dwarf topped out at eight compared to others that are over thirty feet.
Thankyou Jim you are always helpful
Well, I guess I will be LESS afraid to do a hard pruning now. Jeez! That was wicked.
You make it look so easy. I'm so tiny it'll be a challenge...but I'll try it this year. Not yet though. I still have over 100 days of summer down here lol
😂 that was very satisfying to watch.
😲poor grape myrtle flowers😲 that is a beautiful flowering shrub. I don't think I've seen that before. I live in the U.K though so it may not be native to this country. Good video. It would be great to see a follow-up video on this. ☺
I will definitely show it blooming in my monthly tour videos. Thanks for watching.
Very valuable information!
Jim, great video. I have some lorepetlum that are easily 20+ ft high. They were planted long before we purchased this home three years ago. They have beautiful lower trunks, with long thick branches that taper off to that 20+ft mark. I want to trim them back to about 5ft and see if I can’t train them into a much more manageable tree. Do you think they could handle that?
Shrub . foliage . lopers . such awesome sounding words
Helpful! Thank you
That was very painful to watch. Why not wait on the crepe myrtle until winter? That was sad. I came to this video because I had almost dying Indian Hawthorne that is probably 15 years old and just chopped them almost down to the ground. Your Indian Hawthorne were beautiful and didn't have any disease like mine. I am just going to fertilize and hope that they put out new growth. Then I will spray for disease if this works.
My eight year old wisteria is thriving well in zone 8 in north Texas but has never bloomed. Added bone meal to soil in August and watered it into soil.
Gets plenty of sunshine and sprinkler waters it twice a week. Still no blooms. Plan to deep prune it in February. Cut back to third bud all over plant. Right?
When should you do a major pruning on Loropetalum? How much can you take? It was planted on my foundation. It is now way passed the windows. It probably needs to be cut down by 2/3rd or more. Can I do that in one year?
Wouldn't annual pruning eliminate the carnage?
Thank you for this!
I wondered if anyone might advice on a very poorly, but very precious azelea x rhod and how to prune to save her. She had an infestation of some kind of boring AND leaf munching insect. I cleared that up and moved her to a large half oak barrel BUT... I forgot to drill holes for drainage. This is now rectified and she tried her best to bloom this year but none of the buds opened. Her roots are dry and well now, but she certainly had a lot to deal with and the leaf growth that remains is somewhat yellowed/ very damaged from the leaf munchers. I know that now is the time to prune and that it is the only way back to her former glory, but how hard can i/should i go? If i defoliate her entirely, will she survive? (she is an evergreen variety).
Please do chip in before I do silly things :)
New Sub. Thank you for sharing your expertise.
When would you do a hard prune on a boxwood? It was planted in the 1980s and I live in Nashville.
From everything I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot, after your last frost in early spring.
oh, I can't believe what you did to that beautiful crape myrtle, LOL! I know it will be fine, but it was blooming so beautifully! Anyway, I could use some advice. I have some mature shrubs that are 12+ feet tall. They've been in for about 14 years. A couple large rhodies and a large viburnum davidii. All of them suffered damage to their lower areas due to an out-of-control himalayan blackberry problem (thankfully, that has now been resolved) and they are bare on the bottoms and not well shaped. I feel like the viburnum might leaf out on the lower areas if it's pruned back and received more sun there. I have heard you can cut back rhodies hard, but I don't know if they'll actually branch out more? These poor things don't have enough branching on them. What do you suggest?
When I'm nervous about pruning things back hard, I do it a little at the time. I would take the Rhododendron back after it flowers about a foot.
Do or would you water the old established shrubs if it were droughty in your area after pruning in the summer?
Hello, we have overgrown arborvitae trees that I would like to severely prune. Can I stop them from branching out at the cuts? I would like to take the extra branches off of them and just have one central trunk. Do you have a video about this problem? I have lots of pictures you can use also. I do not care if I damage the trees. I really am not that fond of them. lol
Do you have pruning tutorials on weigela shrubs?
I have a very old established dwarf myrtle and I would like to know how hard I can cut it back it's overly woody and branchy inside.
How long after pruning will it take for Indian hawthorn to grow new leaves when pruning in summer months?
I have hedges along my fence, that I just cannot figure out how to prune correctly. They look stragely and bare in center. Any tips?I dont know how to attach a picture here
Ellie Thomas they might just need light so try searching selectively pruning CTSCAPER here on UA-cam
I have a couple of mature sweet osmanthus that are way too tall by the front door of our new home. How aggressive can I be on pruning them down to a manageable size? They are currently about 15 feet tall and all of the growth starts about 6 feet from the ground. Please help!
Thanks for the video, I need to move a 3 year old 5ft crape myrtle bush to a different location, will it survive the move? if so when is the best time or season to do it? Thanks again!
+Claudio NJHW You could cut it and move it in late winter.
Thanks Jim! can I prune the CM to grow as a tree instead of a bush? or is that something you got to do when the plant is young?
Would you still prune the Indian Hawthorn hard the same way after they bloom in May?
Yaupon are so tough.
When and how hard can established lilac bushes be pruned?
You can go after them pretty hard right after they bloom. May be a little late this year to go to crazy on it.
Thankyou ! Great video.
How far back can you prune cypresses and thujas?
+nagra bagra Depends on the varieties probably, but they are less receptive to heavy pruning
Didn't explain why you 'had to do what you had to do' very well. Would it have been so hard to wait until the right time. Also, and I might be wrong about this, but in Australia, the name is CREPE MYRTLE.
Crepe is actually just the French spelling for the English word Crape. The national arboretum in the US introduced most of the known varieties and they spell it Crape. It is literally the least significant thing about them, but it is always the main comments on them.
fair enough. learn something every day. i didn't even know that the english language had such a word as 'crape'. @@JimPutnam
Great work. I have a few skip laurel at the edge of my driveway that are about 8-9 feet tall and are so far over my driveway that I can’t park there now. I was looking to cut about 16-20 inches into the side of it but that would cut away all of the greenery and it’s on the south side where no sun hits and it’s the first week of April. Do you think it will do any severe harm to the plant.??? Thank you
I think it will be fine this time of year. An older plant will be resilient to that. Thanks for watching.
HortTube with Jim Putnam thanks for the reply. I hacked away. Haa
So, 5 months later; what is the outcome?
is it ok to trim back liliacs now have one that need drastic trimming
Yes, after they flower typically
should I deadhead Weigela or just prune it when necessary?
It doesn't need to be dead headed, but I would shear them lightly to keep them nice and full.
what causes boxwoods to look bleached out after pruning dwarf boxwoods zone 8 a
@Vivian- pruned more than 1/4? Mine do that (get yellowish) when interior leaves don't get sun.
I'm in NJ . How can I prune back early blooming rhododendrons that are 6 ft tall and blocking my windows in front of my house? There seems to be a bunch of growth about 1 or 2 ft at the bottom in addition to the leggy growth above. Can I cut off all the top growth and hope that the bottom stuff takes over? We are right near July 4th - can I do it now? They bloomed in probably late March.
You are right on the verge of to late for this year without losing next years flowers. Sometimes though it worth doing just to get them under control.
How can I tell if my flowering bushes Bloom on new wood?
Unfortunately you need to identify them. If you can't just prune after they flower
@@JimPutnam any good sites you know of where i can help identify them?
What about lorapetalum? I want to cut mine back.
After it flowers.
HortTube with Jim Putnam Can I cut it severely? Thank you
An established one can be pruned very hard
So with bushes theres really no technique you just make them little
It’s 2 years later and word on the street is he still has a “project”
Wonder if this would kill an azalea. Hmm...
Your dog didn't move once 😂
She is a super calm creature 🐕
Mid summer chainsaw massacre..
I can do this in 5 seconds with a scissor without risking my legs
I'll bet that crepe myrtle never recovered from such a ridiculous trimming...
It's was a weed in that spot every year. Grew 6' or more every season
I have cut several of my crape myrtles literally to the ground and all came back. I was then able to pick a few stems to train into a multi trunk tree rather than the bush shape they had been.
lol
Good grief.
The one at 6:30 in was in all bloom, he Could have waited
Why do people doing these videos always seem out of breath when they talk
Lee bearrat
Gardening is hard work, especially in August heat.
Too much blablabla ............
Sweet...r u single? I need a "yard" man.
Did you kill them?