Hedge Trimming Tips - The Great Outdoors
Joe Sherinski has tips for trimming a hedge. See how to avoid ugly dead stems and create a beautiful border and barrier.
Theres a lot of dead wood in this hedge, and the reason for it is vertical sides. This hedge has been trimmed with vertical sides for years and years, and as a result, all the foliage at the bottom never got any sun and so it died out. This hedge doesnt even make a good visual barrier anymore. Now this is a nice healthy Yew hedge, and Im shearing it in such a way that its wider at the bottom than it is at the top. Thats called giving the hedge batter, and the reason for doing that is to get sunlight on the bottom of the hedge. That keeps the bottom thick and full and lush. And its important in this instance because this hedge was planted as insulation, keep wind from howling under this drafty old front porch. There are two important things to know about trimming a hedge. The first is different plants should be trimmed at different times of year. Check with your local nursery and make sure youre doing it at the right time of year. And the other thing is with an evergreen hedge like these Yews, never cut past where its green or youll reveal these dead inner stems that may never bud out again. For bigger jobs, you may wanna use an electric or gas powered hedge trimmer, but be careful. These things make a mistake in a hurry. Make the bottom wider than the top, again, to keep that bottom good and thick and full and heres a little tip: lay out a tarp or even an old bed sheet to catch the clippings. Itll save you cleanup time later. Now Ive been doing this for a long time, but when I first started I always put in a guide string like this one. The reason for that is to get the top of my hedge level and straight from one end to the other. And on long hedges like this I still use a guide string. A guide string wont help this hedge though. In fact, if yours looks like this one, what you need to do is rejuvenation pruning. Take a chainsaw, cut it down to six to ten inches tall. Fertilize it. Itll grow back, and when it does, trim it wider at the bottom than at the top.
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