What’s the Difference Between Trimming and Pruning?

World Wide News • July 19, 2016 • No Comments

Trimming and pruning are techniques that maintain the beauty of your garden. Trimming applies to small shrubs or hedges. Pruning, on the other hand, is used to keep trees and shrubs.

These horticulture terms can be utilized interchangeably. However, each has a different type of equipment to be used. They also have different times for application.

Regardless of what technique you use, these two terms make your trees, shrubs and hedges healthy and aesthetically attractive.

Benefits of pruning

Pruning is a method used to prevent loose and dead branches from injuring people or harming other plants. When you remove those branches, you’re allowing the flowers and fruits of the tree to flourish.

It stimulates the tree to grow and not to stunt its growth. Pruning also eliminates pests and diseases. For aesthetic purposes, gardeners prune their trees to have a particular shape.

If you wish your trees to take on unnatural forms, you can use pollarding, which is a kind of pruning. Pollarding involves pruning of trees annually to make trees produce new shoots yearly.

Another form of pruning is topiary. It’s an art of tree shaping into a geometric or animal shape.

Benefits of trimming

It involves tidying up the hedge’s appearance by removing those large branches. Although the primary goal of trimming is to keep the tree’s health and safety of people, gardeners trim shrubs for aesthetic purposes.

Excessive overgrowth of trees can be harmful to people and other plants as they reduce the amount of moisture that the tree receives. That said, gardeners trim trees or shrubs twice a year to prevent such problem to occur.

What are the types of equipment used?

For pruning, you may use hand shears and lopping shears. The former is meant to be used with your one hand. It can remove small buds and leaves. The latter is designed to cut off thick branches.

Lopping shear allows you to exert more force while you cut. Now, if the branch becomes too thick that shears can no longer cut them, you may use saws.

Trimming also uses both scissors mentioned above. However, some gardeners do use electric and gas-powered trimmers.

How often should you trim and prune?

It depends on the plant species. Spring trees, for example, need pruning in late June. Summer flowering trees require pruning or trimming during winter and spring.

At Your Way Tree Service, we can determine whether your plants needs trimming or pruning or both. Contact us today to obtain an estimate. We’ll help you decide on the best technique to maintain the health of your health.

Categories farm & garden services

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