Pruning your coleus is an important part of maintaining its attractive appearance. It helps promote new growth, prevents it from getting leggy and encourages it to control its size and shape.
Coleus is a hardy plant that can be grown both indoors and outdoors. However, it will not survive winters with temperatures that are below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Winter Pruning
Winter pruning is a great way to rejuvenate your garden without harming the plants themselves. It can help shape evergreen shrubs and trees to grow in the most optimum way for your home or property, as well as helping you avoid interfering with walkways, structures and other landscaping features.
Pruning in winter also prevents cold weather from killing the trees, and helps them heal more quickly. Dormant pruning also stimulates new growth, making it a useful technique for younger specimens of yew, holly and boxwood.
In addition, pruning during winter encourages more flowering in spring and stimulates bud closure for shade trees like oak, sweetgum and maple.
As with all ornamental plants, coleus can be pruned to maintain a specific look or shape. For example, cutting back new growth will prevent the stems from growing long and encourage a bushier habit. It is also a good idea to pinch out flower buds as they emerge, which will redirect the plant’s energy into foliage growth.
Spring Pruning
Spring pruning is the best time to prune deciduous fruit trees and most shrubs that bloom on new growth. Pruning early will help the plants seal the wounds that they make during their rapid growth spurt in spring, and remove dead or dying branches to keep them safe and healthy.
Coleus is a great foliage plant that can add color and texture to your garden or landscape. They are low-maintenance, but pruning is essential to control the size and shape of the plant.
Pinching back the leaves can help encourage the formation of side shoots that grow more evenly, and also produce more flowers. The technique can be done with your fingers or a pair of pruning shears.
The main purpose of deadheading coleus is to redirect the plant’s energy away from seed production and toward a more colorful appearance. You can do this throughout the growing season as the flower heads appear, or you can remove the inflorescence entirely by snipping off the faded flowers with a pair of scissors or shears.
Summer Pruning
Summer pruning, also known as heading cuts, is a good way to promote fruit development on mature trees. By removing growth, it allows the tree to open its canopies so that more light can reach fruit buds and improve their color.
When done correctly, summer pruning can improve fruit color and increase harvests on both stone and pip trees. If you prune a mature fruit tree in summer, however, you will need to be careful about not disturbing fruit buds.
Summer pruning is a great time to evaluate the tree’s health and shape, as well as to remove dead, damaged or diseased limbs. This helps the tree to restore its strength and vigor while minimizing the risk of storm damage in the future.
Fall Pruning
Pruning is the process of cutting away dead, dying, diseased, and damaged tissue from a plant. The goal is to promote new growth and improve the overall appearance of a plant.
When pruning a coleus, it is important to consider the entire plant. Look for uneven growth that can cause it to grow top-heavy and topple over.
You should also remove dead and diseased leaves to keep your coleus healthy. You can do this by using sharp, clean shears.
Coleus pruning can be done at any time during the growing season, but it is best to do it in late spring or early summer before the plant begins generating new growth.
You can also try to overwinter a coleus as a houseplant in colder climates (zones 10+). The key is to make sure the temperature inside is warm enough, but not so hot that the plants get too stressed out. Place the plant near a window that lets in adequate light.