Fall Pruning and Care Tips for Perennials and Shrubs
Now that the vegetable garden has been put to bed it’s time to turn attention to the rest of the landscape. Thursday’s frost is a signal it’s time to prepare your shrubs and perennials for winter. Flowering shrubs can be divided into two categories: spring blooming and summer blooming. Spring blooming shrubs such as forsythia, lilac, ninebark and weigela already have this spring's flower buds in place. They're said to bloom on "old wood" because soon after flowering this past season, they began to set the buds for next season's blooms. If you prune these shrubs now, you'll remove most if not all the flower buds. The time to prune ornamental shrubs that flower in spring and early summer, is within a month after they stop blooming. Summer flowering shrubs such as butterfly bush, blue mist spirea, and hardy hibiscus can be pruned now, because they bloom on next year's growth or "new wood". Perennials such as catmint (Nepeta), co...