Thread: Pruning Dogwood
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Old 31-07-2005, 05:33 AM
gasdoctor gasdoctor is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Nov 2004
Posts: 83
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Quote:
Originally Posted by les
"Scott L. Hadley" wrote in message
...

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...

I favour pruning about one third to half of all stems out each year
leaving the most colourful and avoiding crossing branches. On poor soils
it is too brutal to take them down to ground level every year and you get
weedy fragile watery stems that break in a strong wind.

Just cut out the parts that have lost their stem colour.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Good post. One of my rules of thumb when working with this kind of
dogwood, or anything else which needs regular heavy cutting in order to
achieve a certain result, is to cut "one in three" stems out. This is
one of several other rules of thirds which keep popping up with us who
prune for a living. As with most rules, it can be bent quite a bit. But in
this case, as you say, only remove the parts which have lost the desired
stem colour. Cutting all of them at one go is quite harsh.
Can I ask when is the best time to prune them?

Ed
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