How to Trim & Maintain Woody Plants

Video Transcript

"Hi, John Mueller here with Paradise Palm and Expert Village.com. Just wanted to show you briefly how you would trim a ficus or a woody plant versus a other plant that you would share the leaves with. But ficus trees and more tree type of plants such as a money tree here have different type of trimming needs outside of a general plant with broad leaves. When you choose to trim off the top of a plant such as a money tree or ficus tree, you want to prune, if you can get the camera over here, to where you prune right after a leaf node and not any further. If you do it anything, if I do it above the leaf too high I'll have a stick sticking up above this leaf node and you'd like to choose to at least cut it right off that leaf node. We've done this some time ago and it is already starting to produce new shoots off right here. Same thing goes with a ficus tree, if you want to move on over here, is to trim it right at or after a leaf node. And what that does is allows it to not have a stick sticking up and to keep a more uniform dense growth and to do it correctly like that. Your very general information but I definitely would recommend you don't trim it after a leaf stem. I'll just show you what it looks like. You have a stick sticking up. This is not what you want to see after the fact. You want to keep it nice clean appearance and you do this repeatedly through the plant over time you'll have a much better looking canopy out of a woody plant such as a ficus tree or money tree."