Spear bushes should definitely be pruned regularly. If you don't want to carry out maintenance pruning every year, cut your plant back radically every three to four years. If you avoid cutting it completely, the spar will become woody.
How do you cut a spar properly?
When cutting a spar bush, you should remove diseased and weak shoots as well as crossing branches, shorten the oldest shoots to about 20 cm and use sharp pruning shears. Follow legal requirements when trimming hedges and avoid frost or direct sunshine.
The hedge trimming
Hedges should be cut regularly so that they stay in shape. To avoid getting into trouble, you should adhere to the legal regulations for hedge trimming and not trim your hedge between March and September. There are no special features of the spar bush compared to non-flowering hedge plants. He doesn't take offense to a radical cut so quickly.
Cutting the spar for the vase
The non-toxic spar bush also looks good in a vase, but only when the flowers are open. Only cut the spar bush when it has fully bloomed, because the closed buds will no longer open in the vase.
Pruning after flowering
Only the early-flowering varieties of the spar bush are cut back immediately after flowering. For late-flowering varieties, wait until next spring, after frost, to prune. Be sure to use sharp secateurs (€56.00 on Amazon) so that no bruised branches remain visible. Like shoot stubs, these can lead to fungal infections or the invasion of pests.
Cut off all diseased and weak shoots and one of each crossing branch. To thin out the spar bush, shorten the oldest shoots to around 20 cm long. If you like, you can give your spar bush a topiary cut. If this doesn't work perfectly, any errors will soon be fixed again. You can use he althy shoots straight away for cuttings.
The most important things in brief:
- only cut fully bloomed spar bush for the vase
- observe legal requirements when trimming hedges
- use sharp secateurs
- Do not crush branches
- do not leave any shoot stubs standing
- remove all diseased shoots
- do not leave branches crossing one another
- use he althy shoots as cuttings
Tip
Since the spar bush tends to grow quite luxuriantly, it can be pruned quite generously, but not in frost or bright sunshine.
