Pruning spruce trees is something you want to learn to do.

Pruning spruce trees will make you more money. You want to sell nice, full trees as this is what customers want. The way to do this is to prune your spruce at the right time of the year and prune them properly. Here is a step by step guide as to how we do this. This is an important skill to learn when starting a backyard plant nursery for a side hustle or retirement business.

How do spruce trees grow?

Like many trees and other plants, Blue, White, and Norway, spruce trees, follow a growing pattern throughout the year. Starting in the spring, the trees emerge from dormancy. The buds that were formed in the fall will now open and be the new growth for the year for the tree. As the spring progresses, this new growth will grow larger and the stems or branches will become firmer. This new growth is generally lighter in color and can be very attractive.

When to be pruning spruce trees?

As your spruce trees grow, the main trunk of the tree is also growing throughout the year. The greatest growth is in the spring however the tree is growing all through the spring and summer.  Even while dormant the tree is forming buds that will burst open with new growth in the Spring. To track the growth of the tree through the year and know when to prune, it is as follows. We will start after the buds open with new growth in the Spring:

• Buds formed during dormancy open and new growth bursts out in Spring. You can see the beginnings of these buds even in the winter.
• New growth or “Softwood grows from the buds through the Spring gradually hardening off through the summer.
• You want to trim 15 to 25% of this new growth off by about June or July to encourage branching and promote new bud growth.
• By Fall the trees are already forming small buds that will mature while the plant is dormant. Don’t prune your spruce trees now!
• In early Spring the buds swell until bursting again into new growth. When you have pruned properly you tree should become fuller over a few years of growth.

This illustration from Research Gate is from a very in depth article about the annual growth of trees is a more scientific explanation of tree growth.

Pruning spruce trees creates a fuller plant.

The time to prune spruce trees to encourage growth is in the late spring or early summer. June or July is ideal. At the point where you trim the new growth of the tree branch, a new bud will form from and the tree will divide into two or three new stems, This is what creates a much denser tree. If you were to prune your trees in the fall, you would be cutting off the point where all of next year’s new growth would form. If you were to prune in the spring, you would be removing all the buds that will create all the new growth and branching for the next year. so, when you prune is critical.

Larger trees can be sheared

Once your spruce gets to 4 to 5 feet tall you can begin shearing your tree each year. Shearing with a hedge trimmer of some sort or a tree shearing knife (Careful with these) can make quick work of pruning spruce trees. These are how Christmas trees are pruned and is why they become so dense. Skilled people will just graze over the tree to prune off the tips of new growth just like you would do with hand pruners, just faster. A word of caution, shearing works well to a certain point but after too many years the tree will need more light into the center of the tree. The tree can actually start dying back on the inside.

So, the goal with pruning trees is actually not to create a tree as perfect looking as a Christmas tree but a healthy and well shaped tree.

Pruning the top leader of an evergreen tree

As some trees grow you will notice 1 or 2 upward pointing stems at the top of a tree. These are called terminal leaders. If you have 2,  you should certainly remove one, so that one becomes dominant. Generally you do not want to trim the remaining leader or the top of any tree with a single leader. Pruning a spruce tree by trimming the leader may result in branching and an oddly formed top of the tree.

How to get super full spruce trees

If every time you prune your spruce tree, each pruning spot develops into two or three new branches, you will thus develop a nice full tree. You might want to then nip off at least the end of almost every branch when your trees are small. When young and small you certainly want to remove any really odd sized or shaped branching.

When our spruce trees are really small we will quickly run through them and snip off a little bit of the new growth. We snip practically every branch just a little to really encourage denser branching of the tree. Later, when your trees are four or 5 feet tall and larger , this is not as necessary.

At four or 5 feet tall if you have followed good pruning, your tree should be growing nicely and becoming nice and full. From here out, you should continue to shape the tree, but you do not need to clip every branch of the tree each year.

Pruning always creates a fuller and denser plant

Almost any plant you grow in your backyard nursery is going to require some pruning. Just like lightly pruning spruce trees to encourage growth, some plants like spirea really benefit from a very harsh pruning as the same plants tend to grow back very quickly. Thus pruning will help you create really beautiful plants. Some practice and experience will help you adopt the proper pruning methods for each plant you are growing.