Lavender is an extremely beautiful plant. It adds fragrance to your garden and is known as an omen of good fortune and luck. Last week was my 4th year celebration of my Lavender garden and I decided to write this article as my gift to you.
Recently, I found an easy way to prune my lavender to get a big bushy plant.
Trust me! This technique is easy and less time-consuming.
Do You Know Why it’s Important to Prune Your Lavender?
It’s a beautiful scene to watch our plants grow out in huge ways. Some people call it “The Uninterrupted Wonders of Nature”. However, these plants can grow out of balance and begin to choke our little home spaces.
This is why pruning is important – especially for flowering plants like Lavender.
Doing this gets your plant into shape. When you prune your Lavender, it’s similar to training your dog. You will find out that your Lavender will begin to take the shape you’ve always wanted – and this is such a beautiful scene to view.
Pruning is also beneficial to the overall health of your Lavender. It helps your plant grow faster into a big bushy plant.
Now that you know the importance of pruning your lavender, let’s get into the tips and tricks you need to know.
Pruning can’t be easier than this!
How to Prune Lavender To Get a Big Bushy Plant?
Follow these guidelines to prune your Lavender:
4 – Timing is Important
Don’t forget this!
If you are going to achieve the perfect shape and structure you want, then, choose your timing wisely. Whenever I want to prune my lavender, I always wait for the plant to stop flowering. This should be around late summer to early fall.
Additionally, don’t prune your lavender during the cold season. It’s not a good time at all! Your plant might not handle the harsh weather conditions well.
Let me also add that it is acceptable to prune your lavender while it’s still young. It makes your job easier as your plant grows.
3 – Cut out the green stems
Gather a section of your lavender stems into your hands and carefully cut them with your pruner.
Ensure you cut 2-3 inches above the woody part of your plant. You can continue this process until you’ve cut down ⅓ of your lavender plant.
Make sure you do not cut into the woody section of your plant.
2 – Create the Perfect Shape
After cutting out the green stems, it’s time to determine the shape you want your lavender to form.
I prefer my lavender plant to have a rounded look. So, I cut out a part of the stems at the perimeter of my plant while leaving the stems at the center slightly longer.
1 – Follow Up
After the “major” pruning has been done, you need to engage in consistent “light-pruning” activities.
This keeps your lavender in its proper shape as it continues to grow into a big bushy plant.
How to Prune Lavender? Avoid These 4 Fatal Errors!
If lavenders are not properly pruned, they tend to become unattractive in the long run.
If you have a lavender plant in your home, it is important to prune it consistently. This is how to keep the plant in good shape and ensure it blooms in its next flowering season.
1 – Pruning at the wrong time
This is a common mistake of many “newbie” gardeners. They tend to prune their plants at the wrong time. Earlier, I stated that it is not just about pruning.
One of the mistakes you must avoid is to prune your lavender at the wrong time of the year. Doing this will affect the overall health of your plant – thus affecting its ability to produce beautiful flowers.
Lavenders are usually dormant between late fall and winter. These are not good times to pull out your pruning tools.
Avoid pruning your lavender during cold seasons. This exposes your plant to frost damage and stunts its growth.
2 – Bad Pruning Tools
Prune your lavender plant with good, sharp and neat tools. This is essential to having not just a successful pruning exercise, but a healthy and vibrant plant.
Avoid using bad pruning tools. If your pruning tool is not sharp, you might overcut your plant and this would not just cause damage to the plant, but also disrupt the intended shape you want it to form.
Furthermore, using dirty pruning tools exposes your lavender plant to diseases. You don’t want that to happen to your precious lavender, right? Then, use the proper tools.
3 – Not Maintaining a Balance between Over Pruning and Under Pruning
Every gardener must watch out for this pitfall. It’s important to know when “enough is enough” and when “to do just a little more” during pruning exercises.
Over Pruning will affect your lavender plant’s overall health. While under pruning will give it an ugly outlook.
How can you maintain the balance?
Cut ⅓ of the entire plant’s growth. Don’t cut down MORE than that.
Furthermore, make this regular and consistent.
4 – No After-Pruning Exercises
Several gardeners stop watching over their lavender plants after the initial pruning exercise is completed. This is why little or no results are obtained. Be there for your plant to recover and return to full growth.
After pruning, your lavender requires water and fertilizers to grow. Apply both in reasonable measures.
If you avoid these 4 mistakes, your lavender will attain its full bloom by the next flowering season.
Share your thoughts with me in the comment section.
