For some reason it is only after Christmas that the Wisteria seems to call me for its winter prune.  Before that, it just seems to be doing fine and then after the holiday, it suddenly seems in dire need of a serious prune.  As many of you will know, I usually do (or at least start) the job on New Year’s Day, but this year the weather was so wet and gloomy that I only started on the job today.

If you have a wisteria to prune and are not confident as to how to do it, take a look at the video I did of the process last year.  Some friends of mine watched the video last year and after pruning their wisteria, had blooms on it for the first time last spring.  I can’t promise that this will happen for you as the plant has to be mature enough to flower, but if lack of pruning was the cause for few or no flowers, then the video should help.  Even if the plant isn’t ready to flower yet, pruning is important in establishing a framework for the future.

Wisteria Knot

If you don’t get the structure right from the beginning then you can get congestion points or “knots”.  Here a side shoot has grown and forced itself behind a main stem.  This has created a very congested area where it is virtually impossible to get in to remove material.  In previous years, I have pruned as much as I could, but the problem just gets worse as each year even more shoots make the problem worse.

This year, I will prune all around the area to give myself as much visibility as possible.  I will not worry about the three bud principle as I am not trying to get flowers here, but rather to resolve the congestion.  I will then take my pruning saw to the major offenders and hopefully that will sort the issue out.

Hopefully this will be in the next week or two and I will post after the job is done to let you see the results.