Pruning Philadelphus Belle Etoile
GrannyFran
Posts: 27
in Plants
Hi all hope you can help. My dearly beloved hacked my philly last year and I have had very few flowers this year. I know about puning old stems hard back and those that have flowered this year back to a third but there are lots of very long new stems. What do I do about those? Thanks in advance.
0
Posts
Those are the stems that will flower next year so leave as many as you can and just shorten them a bit if too long. As a general rule, you prune back the stems that have flowered as soon as flwoering finishes then give it a feed to encourage the new stems that will flower next year.
You can also remove a third of the oldest stems right back to the ground to keep the plant in bounds and airy and this way you renew it every 3 years without having a poor flowering year.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw