Red Twig Dogwood Bush Pruning
Your goal in pruning dogwood shrubs such as the red and yellow twigged dogwoods is to remove old stems that have lost their brilliance that will be replaced by new brightly colored stems.
Red twig dogwood bush pruning. Stolonifera bear small white flowers but unlike their treelike cousin flowering dogwood they are primarily prized for their colorful red stems. Red twig dogwood cornus alba sibirica and red osier dogwood c. First remove any dead or damaged stems. Propagating red twig dogwoods if you want to propagate red twig dogwoods take hardwood cuttings in late fall.
Sanguinea are grown for their vivid winter stem colour while shrubby c mas the cornelian cherry is grown for its winter flowers and summer fruits. Flowering cornus dogwood trees are grown for their showy coloured bracts in late spring and early summer. A once a year pruning in late winter is essential to maintaining the bright colors of the twigs which is what these shrubs are prized for. Once the buds start to swell you are quickly running out of time.
After pruning your dogwood water it well. Watering the tree after removing branches helps to ease the shock and reduce the stress it might suffer from. Prune them in late winter or early spring while they are still dormant. Cut the branches with sharp pruning shears loppers or a saw at the base near the ground above the first leaf node.
Prune red dogwood bushes in late fall after the leaves have dropped. Shrubby cornus alba c. All branch pruning should cut back to the branch collar or the base of the branch nearest the tree trunk. When it has started to leaf out you can feed it with fish emulsion although it will do fine without.
This varied group of plants give great garden value. Red twig dogwood or red osier known botanically as cornus sericea is a flowering and fruiting shrub with pronounced cherry red branches. Though this is largely a matter of convenience and preference pruning in the spring before bloom will obviously lessen to some degree the amount of buds available to mature and flower.