When should weigela be cut in spring or autumn?

If you want to see a long and lush flowering of weigela, pruning of the shrub should be carried out in a timely manner. This plant is suitable for various decorative purposes: you can decorate an ugly fence, create a green hedge, make a low bush a central element in a flower bed, or come up with a whole composition. Learn to properly trim an ornamental plant, your imagination will tell you what to do next.

In what time frame is it better to trim ornamental bushes?

Weigelu can be compared to lilacs in terms of endurance to pruning shoots. You can cut it in spring, summer and autumn - the bush will not get sick and will not die, it will only release new shoots. The timing of the haircut is mainly chosen for the convenience of the grower. In summer, the plants are densely foliated, and among the greenery it is very difficult to determine which shoots should be removed or shortened. It is better to do this work in early spring, before the buds have blossomed, or in the fall, after leaf fall.

In early spring, look at your bushes and you may notice the black tips of some of the twigs. This happens when the shoots freeze slightly in a cold winter. Wait for the buds to begin to swell and cut off any damaged areas 1 cm above the extreme living bud. If such a sanitary haircut seems too tiring for you, do not delay pruning until the very cold in the fall, trim the bushes 20 days before the onset of frost. In 3 weeks, the branches will get stronger and winter well.

The bushes will thrive if you trim them twice a season. After wintering, branches that have frozen or broken from snow will remain on the weigel. If not removed, the damaged fragments will rot and become a source of infection for the entire bush. Over the summer, some processes will get sick, and pests will settle on some. It is undesirable to send a plant for wintering in this state, it is better to carry out a sanitary haircut some time before frost, let the green pet heal the wounds and send it to winter rest in a healthy state, free from infections and parasites.

How to cut a weigela correctly?

Weigelu is grown because of the colorful ornamental inflorescences that the entire bush is strewn with in summer. In order not to ruin the bud buds, when pruning, first of all remove thin shoots and thick, highly branched shoots. Spring flowers appear on branches grown in the past year. By the spring, they become even twigs of medium thickness, and in the summer they will be covered with inflorescences along the entire length. Old, highly branched trunks will release buds only at the tops of the shoots - it is better to destroy them so as not to thicken the crown.

It is easy to form a crown of the desired type from even one-year-old shoots. You can make a straight green fence, balls, cubes, pyramids. This skill comes with experience, and in the first year you need to learn how to keep the bush healthy. In the spring, carefully examine each shoot. Find frozen, broken, sore areas and remove them. Look for bumps, irregular buds or other damage on the branches, remove such fragments. Do not be afraid if after such an operation only a few twigs remain on the bush - during the summer season the weigela will grow so much that in the fall you will still have to choose what to leave and what to remove.

Advice

If a shoot makes you doubtful, differs from other shoots, and you cannot understand the reason, cut it off and burn it.Weigela recovers quickly, so it is better to remove a suspicious healthy branch than risk the life of the entire bush.

In the fall, treat the near-stem part and all the soil under the crown with fungicides so that no fungal diseases arise. Trim off dead buds, remove growths pointing inward or downward. Over the summer, the shrub releases many shoots, not all of them can develop well. Weak branches will pull forces from the plant, but there will be no sense from them. Such fragments need to be removed. See if the crown is too thick. Extra shoots will interfere with lighting and airing of strong shoots. Even if all the branches are healthy and strong, but there are too many of them, leave the strongest young shoots, and cut the rest mercilessly.

Pruning weigela depending on the species

This shrub was bred by breeders for green hedges and the creation of landscape compositions. Plants intended for such purposes should not develop in arbitrary directions. Through selection, specialists have obtained an ideal version of an ornamental shrub, which only benefits from a haircut. After such a procedure, he builds up a dense crown, the owners can only choose the shoots that will help to realize their artistic fantasy.

When planting, you need to take into account the type of shrub and how high it can reach. If you want to arrange a small curb, you do not need to plant two-meter species, and then try to make a low fence out of them. A small plant will not become the center of the flower bed composition, it will be overshadowed by tall peonies and phloxes, but a one and a half meter bush will be quite appropriate here.

All varieties of weigela are divided into 3 groups:

• dwarf up to 0.5 m;
• medium up to 1.2 m;
• high up to 2 m.

Weigela pruning depends on the type of shrub. Dwarf bushes do not need to be greatly shortened, they are already low. Make a sanitary cut, remove all diseased and damaged branches, shorten the shoots that are too elongated and violate the shape of the crown. On this, the care of the low species weigela can be considered complete. When the plant ages, you can do a rejuvenating haircut, and the bush will release new vigorous flowering shoots. It is advisable to perform such an operation every 3-4 years.

Three-year-old branches will no longer give abundant flowering, they must be removed. If the bush is old, use a rejuvenating treatment. After removing all old shoots, shorten the remaining branches by 1/3. If you got a plot that no one has looked after for many years, cut off all the shoots, let only one stump remain. Young growth will go from the new buds, from which you can form any crown.

Taller species will grow in the absence of care and form an impenetrable shapeless jungle. Trim them in spring and autumn, remove all unnecessary, too long and growing in the wrong direction shoots. If you learn how to properly prune the bushes, not only beautiful flowering plants will appear on the site, but also decorative green sculptures. For beginner flower growers, first of all, it is important to learn how to give a weigela an even configuration, with experience you will be able to make whole plot compositions: a number of matryoshka dolls, a fence with waves and turrets, various figures of animals and people.

Preparing weigela for winter

Weigela is grown both in the southern regions and in frosty Siberia. Depending on the climate, a preparation scheme for winter is chosen. In any case, it is necessary to feed the bushes well in the fall and not let them suffer from thirst. If the fall is dry, water the plants as the soil dries up with clean water at room temperature. In rainy weather, it is not necessary to additionally moisten the ground, and from the end of September, completely stop watering.

In order to survive the winter, weigela needs to gain strength - she needs high-quality feeding. You can buy a fertilizer with an increased potassium content. Look carefully at the composition of the drug that you are purchasing.At this time, plants do not need nitrogen at all: it promotes the development of greenery and young shoots, and this property is necessary in spring, but not in preparation for wintering. Young growth will not withstand severe frosts, and in the spring you will have to cut off the frozen shoots and reanimate the weakened bush.

You can make your own feeding mixture. To make a 1 m composition² land under plantings, you need to mix:

• rotted manure or compost - 4 kg;
• superphosphate - 50 g;
• potassium sulfate - 30 g.

After watering and fertilizing, you need to mulch the trunk circles. A thick layer of mulch will protect the root system from freezing. With a shortage of time for this work, be guided by the age of the weigela and the climatic conditions of your region. It is necessary to insulate the soil under young bushes in all regions, and under adult plants in the southern area, you can leave the soil without shelter.

In frosty regions, the bush can freeze out in a severe cold. To protect it, you can bend all the branches to the ground and insulate it with straw, dry grass, spruce branches. When it starts to snow, throw a large snowdrift over the plant. You can drive stakes around the trunks and wrap them with insulating material. The plant's requirements for shelter depend on both the weigela variety and the climatic conditions of the region where it is grown. If you bought a plot where an ornamental shrub has been growing for many years, and the owners have never even thought about warming it, you can send it for the winter in the same mode - an adult weigela has already adapted to the cold.

Young and recovered bushes require special attention. Cover them for the winter from bitter frosts. In regions with heavy snowfall, large drifts can break fragile twigs. If the cold in your area occurs very rarely, cover the plant only from heavy rainfall or bend flexible branches to the ground and fix them in this position. If winter is predicted to be warm, do not cover the weigela with a thick layer of insulating material: in conditions of high humidity, rot and fungal infections will begin to actively spread, and in the spring you will have to treat diseased bushes.

In each region, people have developed their own methods of warming ornamental shrubs.

• In the Moscow region, they are wrapped with heat-insulating material over the frame.
• In the Volga region, branches bent to the ground are covered with mulch.
• In the southern regions, the trunk circle is mulched, and the bottom of the shoots is protected with a mound of earth about 20 cm high.
• In cold regions, frost-resistant varieties are grown, which are wrapped in a thick layer of heat-insulating materials, and in winter they create a large snowdrift above them.

Weigela can decorate both southern gardens and summer cottages of northerners. If you treat the peculiarities of caring for a southern shrub correctly, it will overwinter perfectly in any region and will release a huge number of buds in the spring. Learn to properly trim shrubs, and you can create interesting compositions, green hedges, and live paintings near your cottage. Beginners don't need to try to get a complicated haircut right away. Start with the simplest: plant a medium-sized bush in the middle of the flower bed, shape it into a pyramid, cone or ball. When you learn how to prune correctly, your area will be filled with unique compositions covered with lush inflorescences.