How To Spring Prune Acer Palmatum Atropurpureum, Pruning Japanese Acers, How To Spring Prune Japanese Maple, How To Cut Back Acers, Get Gardening
Tools required;
Clean and sharp secateurs
Japanese Acers (Acer palmatum types) always suffer from winter dieback.
The first thing is to note that they do suffer from this problem and that generally it is not due to how they have been cared for over Winter.
Although there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why this Acer die back occurs it does tend to happen to a greater extent when the plant roots sit wetter, and get cold. It is therefore more prominent in container grown plants.
Pruning for Acer die back is simple as it literally is a case of cutting back the dead, light brown, sections of plant stem.
If you are not sure if the section of stem is dead then lightly scrap the surface of the stem, using your fingernails. If under the bark surface it is green then that section is still alive.
To Spring prune Acers then you ideally want to do it when the plants are just coming out of dormancy, but before their buds break to form leaf.
I tend to prune mine in March once I know the worst of the Winter weather has passed and that more dieback won’t occur.
For general spring pruning start by removing any dead, diseased or damaged stems and then follow up by looking to remove unwanted stems that cross through the centre of the plant.
You can remove a maximum of one third of total size but with an Acer that amount would seldom need to be removed.
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3 Comments
Oh crikey, I’ve just watched your latest video on pruning Acers & I realise I’ve left it too late. Mine don’t really need any shape pruning thank goodness, but they do have a small amount of die back. Is it too late to prune the die back now if I don’t cut any live wood? What should I do? Help! 😂 Thanks so much as always. I’m really grateful for all your advice across the board as books & videos are great at telling you how to do things correctly, but offer little to no advice about what to do if you get it wrong, esp timing. 🙈🙈🙈
Thanks so much very helpful regarding pruning my Acers. Happy New Year.
I don't particularly like what I've seen: 10 minutes of "snip a little here and snip a little there". That's a little lame. So no, I won't subscribe, thank you.