Japanese Maples

[bjk]

Traditionally I'd always thought that branch pruning of my maples in winters was the go. Its cold, they're dormant, Spring comes, life goes on.
The eminent Peter Adams always talks of branch pruning in summer for developing trees. He cites avoiding excessive sap bleeding (- by root pruning first), better shoot development, but more importantly, he advocates "paint pruning" in winter to specifically identify what cut and where when the bare skeleton is visible and then actually cutting the branch in summer at the "paint prune" point for a subsequent quicker recovery.

What's the Australian view of this Pommie practice.

BJK


11th Commandment - Thou shalt have a hard drive failure sometime
Observation - You canna make an appointment

[shibui]

Seems to be more and more evidence that pruning can be done at (almost?) any time of the year.
Summer pruning is advocated because wounds are quick to heal or at least to close off the vessels and reduce chance of infection. Many orchards are summer pruned now because of this but it is ahrder to see branch growth with all the leaves on.

I believe that resulting growth will vary depending on time of cutting as buds have different vigour at different times of the year. Spring buds are strong and internodes will be far apart. Later in summer growth is slower and resulting internodes shorter.

Interesting concept - 'paint pruning'. I will have to consider the possibilities.....

[MattA]

Instead of paint, I have used pieces of wire to mark branches I want to layer later in the season. It works wonders to find the exact spot under all the growth, no searching tree or memory for best placement. It would work the same for planned pruning & we all have wire...