I purchased a Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) nursery stock which has some decent growth occurring. I wanted to cut it back as it’s quite tall (~5 ft) and potentially style it but plan to leave it in its pot until next spring. Is it too late to do this?
My understanding is that most deciduous trees are fine with having the current year’s growth pruned during the summer. Cutting older branches or trunk chops should generally be done during dormancy.
So, if I had a big wisteria, I think I would try to keep it at about the same size and shape it was in early summer, and do structural pruning and wiring next spring before it starts blooming.
I’m not sure that this is completely correct for wisteria, specifically, but this seems to be the general rule of thumb.
Knowing you want to repot in the upcoming spring…My question would be where do the wisteria store it’s energy? My guess (I don’t know) is probably in the vascular tissue but I would try to find this out before deciding how much to cut off…for what it’s worth
Thank you. I was kinda feeling this is what I should do, pruning to keep it the same size then style in the spring. I watched one of the wisteria videos about partial defoliating a wisteria after the first flush of growth has hardened off and given this wisteria is so aggressive with growth, I may do that but leave the heavy pruning (chopping off the top) for the spring as you suggest.
Good point I think I’m going to hold off reducing the height until early spring as suggested by @Chado-ojisan.