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When I think of pruning, three things come to mind. That’s cuts to thin, cuts to tip or shorten branches and the horrible things you can do with a hedge sheers.

Let’s start with the one I obviously do not like. As you make those sculptured cuts with hedge shears you create a mass of short twigs. As they re-sprout and get wacked off again and again, the outer surface gets so dense that light cannot penetrate the center of the plant.

In time, the interior of the plant becomes a skeleton clothed in a thin layer of green. That’s not a serious problem until wind, snow, pet or human action breaks a limb or a limb dies. Getting re-growth from that interior skeleton is nearly impossible.

Also, if you are using a flowering shrub for a formal hedge or topiary you often have to choose between flower buds and neatness. Years ago I spotted two forsythia bushes, round as a ball, with a narrow band of flowers around the base. I will carry the vivid memory of bald-headed forsythias to my grave.

If you must hedge, let the hedge be wider at the bottom because that will make the most light available to the plant, somewhat mitigating some of the problems listed above.

Tipping, or shortening, branches is one approach to maintaining size on a plant. A better approach would be to pick a plant that fits the space rather than one than must be held in check.

When you tip you can almost always expect a whirl of branches to form just below the cut. This can be valuable if you are trying to set branches on a tree. This is regularly employed when training central leader (one stem) fruit trees, evergreens and the like.

A tipped branch will become stiffer, so tipping can be a tool to decrease drooping branches. When tipping, make cuts just above a bud at a 45 degree angle. If you tip randomly, not paying attention to the buds, you will leave stubs that die, inviting disease and insects. In the industry, they are called cloth hangers.

Cuts to thin remove whole branches or twigs from trees or shrubs and stems at ground level from multi-stemmed plants. This also can be effective in controlling a plant’s size as well as getting light into the interior of the plant.

Before you start, spend a few seconds looking at the structure of the tree or shrub. Look carefully at the victim branch and where it joins the branch you are keeping. You will notice a slightly enlarged ring. Sometimes, it almost looks like a ring of small pimples where the two branches join.

The secret is to cut as close to that ring as possible without damaging it. That ring contains the active growth cells that will quickly heal the pruning cut, limiting the time for disease and insect damage. Again no cloth hooks, please.

Correct pruning is not complicated. If you leave the branch growth rings in tack and produce no cloth hooks, you will soon be an expert. And I almost forgot, don’t worship the hedge trimmers.

Several days ago, while on one of my near daily search and discover missions in a storage area, I found my good pair of limb loppers. I picked them up and, before putting them down, I pumped them several times. They are ready for action after a rest from sometime last summer.

Since I like the natural look with my short needled evergreens (anti Christmas trees) and the apple trees in my home orchard are really young, the loppers’ first job will target the twig dogwoods that are scattered throughout my landscape. I like this plant for the brilliant winter stem color, an eye-catcher in the winter landscape.

With the twig dogwoods you have two pruning options. The easiest is to cut the whole plant nearly to the ground and get all new growth. My choice is to eliminate all second year growth at the ground level, since their twigs retain good color for two seasons. At this point in the winter it is easy to spot the aging (ugly) twigs.

If growing your own fruit is your thing, the pruners need to visit the apple, pear and sour cherry trees, the grape vines and the blueberry bushes soon. With apples and pears, remove the upright shoots that grew last year and thin enough to get light into the center of the tree. The best fruit will be on two year old branches that angle upward at 45 degrees.

Sour cherries need a minimum of annual thinning.

Grape vines are seldom pruned enough. At each leaf from last year a fruit bud formed which will produce a bunch of grapes this season. They should be very obvious now. A young or weak growing vine should be asked to produce about 30 bunches. The limit for the most vigorous vines should stay in the neighborhood of 50 fruit clusters. A correctly pruned grapevine looks naked.

Pruning blueberries is easy. They are multi-stemmed. Shoot for five to seven stems. Each spring remove the oldest stem at ground level. Examine the new suckers that formed last year. Keep the best one and remove the rest, and you are done.

As previously reported, I planted a few black raspberry vines last year for the first time. The literature suggests that the canes will produce a number of laterals. Each lateral should be shortened to about ten inches in the spring.

Amish along several of my frequent travel routes have what look like successful raspberry patches. I noted that they were all pruned in the last several days. Furthermore, it looks as if they pruned a bit more than the literature suggests. I guess I will just experiment.

It’s pruning season again, but unless it’s a hardy deciduous tree or something on the above list, be patient and your plant will be happier. I’ll be back with my ‘be patient’ list next week.

Photo courtesy of the Penn State extension. http://www.extension.org/pages/32434/grapes-production-pruning-grape-vines

     For those of us who think that binoculars are part of a standard wardrobe, we try to fit at least one Christmas Bird Count into our holiday traditions. The counts, which are tied to the Audubon Society, occur during the three weeks closest to Christmas.
      A 15 mile diameter circle is selected, a day is picked and volunteers scour the area listing each species seen and a count for each species. Counts are held across the country. Lancaster County hosts three. I’ll go three for three this year and only a commitment I thought about breaking kept me home from one in Delaware.
      Some volunteers start before daylight looking for owls but most wait for daylight. In the Solanco count, I joined a team of eight at 7 am. Six of us were fresh from our beds. The other two had been out in the dark. When I quit in early afternoon, only the two owlers were still pursuing the quest.
      The idea of a Christmas Bird Count dates back to 1900. Prior to that, the Christmas “side shoot” was a tradition. Simply put, teams were chosen, bets were placed and whoever could produce the largest pile of fur and feathers was the winner.
Seeing declining populations, the emerging conservation effort staged the first Christmas Bird Count in 1900 as an alternative. Twenty seven volunteers scattered from the east coast to California counted 90 species that first year. The rest is history.
A count of 90 today would be low for the Solanco Count. The target for any of the Lancaster County Counts is 100 and is often met. To put those numbers into perspective, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology lists 302 different birds that have been seen across Pennsylvania during the whole of 2010.
      This year Solanco fielded about 40 volunteers divided into 18 teams. That’s about the norm for the last six or eight  years. They finished the day with 97 different species.
      The Solanco Count was started 35 years ago by Robert Schutsky. I met Bob more than 20 years ago when he hosted my son’s Boy Scout troop on his boat during a nature tour on the Susquehanna River. Since then he has built a company, Birdtreks, which offers national and international birding and nature tours. He continues to coordinate the Solanco Count.
      A count in the Lititz area was initiated just several years after the first nationwide count. The other Lancaster Count is held closer to the city.
      My segment of the Solanco Count started with the first rays of sunlight on a windswept field along a woods edge. Our results there, except for a flock of several hundred American pipits, left me wondering whether the birds might be smarter than we were. It was cold!
      The next stop was in a valley transversed by a small stream. A wide mix of vegetation, food and plenty of cover existed. We found birds at a pace that kept my eyes and mind racing. I no longer questioned the intelligence of birds.
      Our group ended with nearly 40 different birds. That seems to be about the number I get in each count, but I always walk away with some insights or great looks. It was a red shouldered hawk at Solanco. At Lititz, I got my best ever Pennsylvania looks at several yellow-bellied sapsuckers.
      To me, it’s great Christmas fun for a good cause. I know there are more than 40 bird lovers in the Solanco area. Why not join us next year?