How to prune potted gardenia
Today, the editor will explain how to prune potted gardenias and the knowledge of green plants and flowers about the pruning methods of gardenias. Let's learn about it together.
Gardenias bloom in spring with large, pure white flowers that have a strong fragrance. Planting one in the room will fill the house with fragrance when it flowers. To make gardenias grow well and bloom more, pruning is essential to maintain an elegant and full plant shape. Let's talk about how to prune gardenias.
Gardenia pruning is done in stages. Generally, after blooming, a strong pruning is required. After flowering, remove the spent flowers promptly, and new branches will grow from the top. The strong pruning involves cutting off the small inner branches, dense branches, and leaf buds at the bottom to ensure good ventilation. Small branches do not receive sufficient nutrients, which can lead to weak growth and poor flowering. Long branches should be shortened appropriately to maintain a pleasant shape. This will encourage new side buds to grow quickly from the top, which will grow rapidly throughout the season until autumn. Once new buds appear, we only need to retain two larger leaves at the bottom and cut off the rest. You can keep a pair or two pairs of leaves, preferably short, to make the plant more full.
If the branches grow too long and the top is removed, the entire plant will become loose. Additionally, gardenias have a characteristic where the bottom leaves fall off during the continuous growth process. If the branches are too long and only the top leaves are left, the plant will look unattractive. This pruning and topping should continue until autumn. As autumn begins, we can prune once more, but after that, we should avoid further pruning. The new branches grow slightly slower in autumn than in summer, and as the top buds grow and age, they will gradually harden and form flower buds. Although the flower buds are not visible at the top, cutting them off will prevent the plant from flowering the following year.
Since gardenias bloom on the old branches from the current year, pruning in autumn with topping, along with sufficient phosphorus and potassium fertilizer, can promote rapid growth and aging of the branches. The top will gradually harden and then form flower buds. By the following spring, when the weather warms up, flower buds will grow directly from the top.
Therefore, pruning gardenias is crucial and must be done correctly to ensure abundant branches, side buds, and a full plant. If pruning is not done properly or if continuous pruning occurs in autumn, the plant will not have flower buds and will not bloom in the spring. No matter how much fertilizer is used to promote flowering, no flower buds will form, which is mainly due to improper pruning.
The above sharing on how to prune potted gardenias and detailed introduction of gardenia pruning methods for reference by netizens.