Painting a trellis...
Zoomer44
Posts: 3,267
The trellis should have been treated when it went up about 2yrs or so ago but wasn't. It's free standing about a ft in from the fence with a ft wide slate path behind, so accessible from behind.
Ivy and honey suckle aren't well established on the trellis so could easily be untwined. There's a potato plant whose branches can't be untwined but me thought it would be ok if these got a little wood stain on. I'm happy to prune the Lavatera down, it's a rigourous plant and will survive a sever pruning.
Here's the problem... I'm not sure when to prune back clematis...Freckles and jingle bells are well established, both evergreen and cover the middle section of the trellis, they're just coming to the end of flowering and look really lush. There is also a summer flowering clematis grown in between them to flower between May and September which looks almost dead but has started to put out shoots and grows in the branches of freckles and jingle bells.
The Q is , the trellis needs painting and the clematis will need to be cut back/pruned, can this be done now and how far back can they be pruned...
Posts
The summer flowering clematis can be cut down as low as you like right now but do give it a good feed afterwards so that it is encouraged to prodcue new shoots from below ground. If that makes you feel nervous, cut each stem back to the lowest pair of buds and feed it anyway.
I'm not familiar wit Jingle Bells but freckles is a group 1 which means you only prune it to keep it in bounds or renew vigour and then directly after flowering. I suggest you cut off the more tangled top growth and then try and unwind lower stems and then re-attach them to the trellis once it's been painted.
If you can give your trellis 2 or even 3 coats, it won't need doing again for years.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
This site has just about every clematis you can think of!
http://www.taylorsclematis.co.uk/clematis-by-name/
I suspect this one has even more - http://www.clematis.hull.ac.uk/
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Just finished painting fences and trellis very messy job doing both sides of trellis,weather is nice just now need to plant my gladioli bulbs but not sure as to what depth they should be at,gar5den is coming along nicely despite the bad weather hope to see daffs in bloom soon.