pruning is underway here in zone 5 b.
took down some big group 3 's today. recta, huge...filled wheelbarrow. rubromarginata...same thing. sad to cut back the texensis. the larger ones took a few years, so still traumatic to cut them. but etoile rose and duchess of albany came all the way down.
leaving most of my terniflora this year unpruned for earlier blooms this year. kind of go hard every other year with those.
many of my smaller plants had pruned themselves with the harsh winter. broken stems. we had more snow on the ground for longer this year than i can ever remember.
let my helper take down the largest non climbing herbaceous clems ( wyvale, heracfolia, cote de azur, jouinana praecox)
hagley hybrid , comtesse bouchard, rouge cardinal, marie boiselotte, ville de lyon getting a half and half this year. going half and half can result in earlier, and larger blooms and continued bloom period from the new growth.
you also have to use instinct and sometimes take a p2 down almost like a p3 if there is a lot of damage.
feels good to be out there, although taking a cane off a plant that is budding all along it is sometimes not easy. when you look in the wheelbarrow and see a lot of green it is always sad...however, we are coming on fast here. day time back in 50's but sunny. hope we do not get hit hard in april with late cold snow and frost.
pruning
Sounds like you were a busy bee today!!!! Must have felt good to get things all cleaned up and pruned. I went and found a patch of soil and poked at it today - yup still frozen LOL!!!
I sort of "have" to prune my group 2's like 3's cause of the winter here. In the spring I have never seen buds on the old growth so I cut them down. Not sure if this is right or wrong but this is what I have done since I have started growing clematis. They still bloom really well for me though.....they typically start blooming at the end of June. Since at the beginning I didn't know too much about the pruning types that is why I ended up with some 2's but now I "try" to stick with pruning group 3's if I can help it.
you might prune your twos by 50% from the ground vs height instead hard prune and wait a couple of extra weeks to see if there is re growth. however, you are in a different zone, i have no experience there and your clems photos look amazing..so what ever you are doing it is good!
i am so far ahead on cleaning the leaves from beds,(helper gets credit),
pruning and it has been so spring like i am seriously worried if it all too early and we have winterish weather coming.
your wait for good weather must be excruciating......almost over i'd venture to say. hope so. good luck!
I was thinking of "trying" what you suggested by cutting back 50% and see what happens. Yes it is really starting to get frustrating hearing about everyone else's clems getting buds and growth and here I still have snow LOL!!! Frustrating now but it will be well worth it later.
I am sure you will be fine with your clean up. I do the same thing every year and then think oh no maybe I cleaned up too soon! However the plants have always been ok.
25 degrees this morning.....dawn, you must be crazed. is there still snow on ground?
we almost have all the leaves up that we blew into the beds in the fall. have had a good helper all week.
some more pruning to do, but not really in a hurry with this weather.
Ha! I just took these 2 photos to show you......this is what I see in the backyard....LOL You can see my poor clems up on the back fence...they are twigs....
You should ALWAYS hard prune your pruning group 3's if you only prune by half you'll only have blooms on the new vines grown during the new season..which will have blooms only at the top..not from the ground up..of course you might personally find this appealing but having such a long growing season here in Texas..I hard prune my pruning group 3's about 3 times during the growing season and get three bloom periods...Jeanne
This message was edited Mar 20, 2009 9:40 AM
This is what I see from my front window LOL
Thanks Jeanne - yes I always hard prune my 3's for sure!!! I was just saying that I also have to hard prune my 2's because they don't seem to do well over the winter and in the spring I have never seen new growth on the old stems....new growth starts from the bottom.....strange eh? I know a lot of group 2's are suppose to be hardy to my zone so I don't know why that happens.
dawn, i will quit grumbling about my cold day here!!! you must have a fast start when it all melts off...hope that comes soon. i love snow but by this time of year i am DONE with it.
Dawn I never grow Group 2's here - mostly just not worth it - I think the old growth just has too much die back in the winter so they dont do well although location might help. But I cant be bothered!
I wonder if you are just not giving the old growth enough time to put out new shoots? When have you cut it down - I would suggest letting the old growth stay up for the summer just to see what happens - if you have not already done this. If you are hard pruning it every spring then you never have old growth to bloom.
You are right fancyvan....maybe I don't let it stay long enough before cutting it back...not sure. But like I said I know I can still grow the Group 2's however after I cut them back they bloom by the end of June which isn't bad either....Maybe I will leave The President and see what it does this year as an experiment LOL...
Bbbbbrrrr, Dawn! Your pictures are sending chills down my spine! Doesn't your garden know that today is the 1st day of Spring?!
i agree with fancy van. hold off pruning a bit or go half and half and see if you like the results better than the hard prune. i think you will get bigger blooms in the beginning of your bloom period from this. but your blooms on the fence sure looked good so whatever. the clems can probably figure it out no matter what!!
Shirley someone told me it was the first day of spring today. I was like - eh? Spring? LOL.
Yup I heard that too! Well the sun is shining and it is warmish ( depending on what you compare to!) and things are melting but we have a long way to go. There are years when I have early bulbs in bloom byu the end of March - guess its not going to happen this year!
sounds of spring in clem garden:
nip , tuck
nip, tuck
whack whack
nip, tuck, whack!
Wow I can see you have been working hard! Holy cow!!!
yep. top dressed about 40 more today. i am very pleased with the shoots and leaf buds on almost everything. still looking for flammula and viorna form spring last year and some vitacellas that i put in last fall to make an appearance. but 95% of all clems are shoots and sprounting. i usually do my pruning in stages , whcack off aobut half of a big plant that gets hard pruned, then come back thru i few more times deciding if i am leaving any stems and how low to take them. usually base that on damage and tangle.
09 may be a good season form the looks of it right now!