Pruning Is the Best Way to Tell Your Plants What You Want Them to Do

If you have kids, you know that they usually don’t like being told what to do. Plants, on the other hand, don’t mind a little bossing around. Or, at least, they can’t talk back to you, right?

We gardeners can actually tell our plants what we'd like them to do—and our tool to do this is a set of pruners. Think of pruning as speaking their plant language and giving them simple commands. 

It’s easy to think that your plants are in charge in your garden until you see how quickly they respond to a little instruction. Just a few careful cuts, and your plant will be like, “Oh, okay. I can do that for you.” (Still waiting for my kids to start obeying me.)

So grab a pair of clean pruners and get ready for something to finally listen to you! 

Why Is Pruning Plants So Important?

Just like us, plants only have so much energy. This is true for plants we grow for their leaves and definitely for plants that we grow for their flowers or fruit. Each large leaf, each flower, and each piece of fruit is a drain on that energy.

Why, then, is the plant holding onto them? To understand the answer, you have to consider the plant's motivation. Plants are only driven by one thing: Surviving long enough to make more of themselves. Plants want to become the biggest version of themselves with the maximum number of fruit containing the most seeds possible. Because those seeds are the plant's attempt to make as many copies of its DNA as possible.

So when you remove those flowers or fruit from the plant, the plant is like, "Oh no! I haven't made enough of myself yet! I need to make more!"

Picture a beautiful tomato plant that's ripening a large piece of fruit. When you harvest that fruit (harvesting is just a form of pruning with the intention of eating what you take, right?), you're releasing the plant of its responsibility to that fruit. The plant now has more energy to spend on forming new fruits.

Pruning is basically your way of telling the plant, More of this, less of that, please and thank you. Not only that, pruning is essential to increase overall plant health, direct a plant's growth, and maximize production.

I'll go over some pruning dos and don'ts and how-tos in a minute here, so stay with me before you head out to the garden and start chopping.

Pruning Increases Overall Plant Health

Pruning is one of the best ways to maintain the health of your plants. You need to prune for this very reason, if for no other reason, even if you're hesitant to cut your plants.

Specifically, pruning can relieve pest pressure, increase air circulation, give plants more space to grow, and allow certain leaves to take in more sunlight.

I practice something called intensive planting in my garden. It's basically packing in the plants. While I love growing this way, it can sometimes become a little too... well, intense for some plants if they find themselves in a tight spot. If I weren't diligent about pruning, I'd run into some serious issues. If you've planted close together, you need to prune the exterior of each plant to maintain good air flow.

You also need to prune inside the plant, as well. Plants with lots of stalks or vines or leaves can sometimes have so much plant mass that the interior doesn't receive any airflow, water, or sunlight. This means mildew, mold, and other stinky stuff you don't want in your kitchen garden.

Lastly, pruning for plant health involves removing diseased, stressed, or pest-affected leaves. So, for the health of your plants, head out to your garden with a clean pair of pruners about once a week to do a little maintenance pruning. I'll tell you how in a bit.

Pruning Directs Plant Growth

Pruning is a way to tell your plants which way you want them to grow. Picture some herbs, Swiss chard, and peppers growing in the front of a garden bed. Regularly pruning the back leaves of these plants helps them grow more toward the front of the bed, which leaves more room behind them for the other plants to get plenty of sunlight and space. The herbs will take the hint and cascade over the side of the bed.

You can also direct plants to stop growing. Toward the end of the season, you can tell a fruiting plant like a cherry tomato to stop producing new fruit and to start ripening the fruit it's already formed. This process is called “topping” because you’ll prune the top of the plant. Through topping, you tell the plant to slow the energy placed on creating more vines and leaves and accelerate the energy for ripening the fruit (so you can pick it). You're essentially signaling to the plant that it's time to finish what it started.

If you want to pot up some plants and move them indoors for winter, you'll signal to these plants to stop growing by cutting off the tips of their growth. That way, the plants will focus on adjusting to a new environment and resting instead of trying to grow up or out.

Pruning Maximizes Plant Production

This is my favorite reason to prune because I like good production in my garden. I mean, who doesn't? I learned the necessity of pruning for production my first year growing tomatoes when I had beautiful, healthy plants full of lush green leaves—but no tomatoes.

When you prune for production, you’re telling your plant what you want more of and what you want less of. It’s not as relevant for leafy greens like kale, but it’s very important for fruiting plants like peppers, watermelons, cucumbers, or tomatoes. If you let these particular plants grow on their own and if the conditions for growing are right, the plants may keep producing more stems and leaves instead of flowering or fruiting until the season has nearly come to an end. The more leaves on a fruiting plant, the more the fruiting plant will delay or slow its fruiting, and that’s why pruning on a regular basis is a critical step to get the most fruit from your plant.  

So, the first component of pruning for production is to prune the leaf-producing stems and keep the the fruit-producing stems. Each time you do that, you’re telling the plant, "Look, all I want from you is tomatoes, so please stop giving me leaves."

The second component of pruning for production is to keep your fruiting plants well picked. This is really just harvesting, right? As soon as tomatoes, beans, peas, etc. are formed on the plants, you want to take them so that the plant has energy and motivation to form new flowers and fruits.

Pruning for production can be a very important part of tending your garden.

Follow these rules of pruning in your kitchen garden:

• DO start at the bottom of the plant and prune your way up.
• DO take off anything that's diseased, pest-infested, or just looks bad, even if it's way up on the top of the plant.
• DO prune things that you don't want more of (i.e., leaves on a fruiting plant).
• DO prune flower heads if you're not ready for a plant to go to seed.
• DON'T toss disease- and pest-affected leaves in the compost pile used to make organic matter for the garden. These need to go in the trash.
• DON'T use dirty pruners. Wipe down your pruners each time you head out to the garden with rubbing alcohol and a rag or paper towel. It's also a great idea to rub your pruners down with more rubbing alcohol and then allow them to dry before moving on to the next plant. Otherwise, you risk passing disease from one plant to another.
• DON'T prune when leaves are wet. Doing so can also spread disease.
• DON'T prune too many leaves from any one plant at one time. This leads us to...

The Golden Rule of Pruning

Never prune more a third of the plant over a one- to two-week period. The plant needs leaves, after all, for photosynthesis. If you find yourself having to remove a lot of damaged leaves, this is a pretty good indicator that you have an issue that needs more attention. It might be time to say bye-bye to that plant and start fresh.

How to Prune Plants for Health

Do this maintenance pruning on your plants once a week.

Step One

Cut away any leaves that are discolored or spotted, that have holes or tears in them, or that are showing signs of stress. These leaves are the most likely to be suffering from pests or disease. If your leaves only have a couple holes in them from pests, they're still 100 percent edible. Just give them a good wash first.

This type of pruning removes something that's putting stress on the plant without contributing at all to production. The plant will feel an enormous sense of relief once it's gone. It also removes the food source for the pests. You'll be surprised how far pruning leaves can go toward solving pest infestations. Keep the Golden Rule of Pruning in mind, though.

Step Two

Once you've removed damaged leaves, start at the base of the plant and remove some of the older, outer leaves. This takes the pressure off of the plant from having to support old leaves that have been there, oftentimes, just a little too long. By pruning them, you free the plant to focus its efforts on growing bigger and forming new leaves.

How to Prune Herbs

When pruning or harvesting herbs, start by cutting from the outermost branches and then work your way in. The one exception is basil. For basil, topping off each stem right above a leaf node tells the plant to grow big and bushy, instead of tall and narrow.

Harvesting your perennial herbs like rosemary, mint, oregano, and thyme this way keeps them from becoming too woody. It also has advantages for annual herbs. If you've ever grown basil or cilantro, you know that they love going to seed. Weekly pruning with these herbs is really important to get the most leaf production before your plants focus all their energy on making seeds.

If you see a flower head forming, be sure to pinch it off (pinching, by the way, is just another word for pruning with your fingers). This sends the message to the plant that it needs to devote more energy to leaf production before forming flowers.

Take all your leaves inside and use them fresh or save them for future enjoyment.

How to Prune Leafy Greens

If you want your leafy greens to produce more leaves, you first need to cut away any damaged or yellow leaves that are pulling too much of the plant’s energy away from new leaf production.

Once you've gotten rid of unhealthy leaves, harvest the older leaves. On plants like kale, cabbage, lettuce, and Swiss chard, the older leaves are on the outside of the plant, closer to the base. These plants grow new leaves from their center. By harvesting (and eating) the outer leaves regularly, you’re telling the plant to keep producing new leaves and sparing it from having to support the bigger, older leaves.

Annuals like lettuce and spinach love to bolt (go to seed) the minute the weather warms up. Cut off the top of these plants when you notice they're starting to grow too tall. This prevents the flower head from forming. These herbs will eventually go to seed, but you can buy yourself some time (and a couple more leaf harvests) before the flavor of the plant changes too much and the plant spends all its energy on going to seed.

Of course, the great thing about pruning leafy greens is that you can fill your salad bowl for lunch!

How to Prune Flowers

With flowering plants that are cut-and-come-again like marigolds and zinnias, you want to pinch back the blooms early in the plant's life cycle. Before the first set of flowers opens fully, come to the base of the flowering stem and cut with a clean pair of pruners. Leave the rest of the branches to produce new blooms. (This doesn't work for one-and-done flowers like sunflowers.)

By removing your first set of flowers, you take some stress off the plant and encourage it to branch out and produce more blooms in the future. As long as a plant is holding on to that first flower, it won't grow larger or produce many more flowers because it's just trying to maintain the gorgeousness of that bloom. It might cause you pain to cut the first bloom, but in the end, it's totally worth it.

To prune or harvest after that, all you have to do is cut right above a leaf node (where two leaves grow directly opposite from each other) with a clean pair of pruners or scissors. Prune spent blooms to encourage your plants to produce more flowers. The more you cut from flowering plants, the more they'll produce for you.

Take your pruned/harvested stems inside to arrange in a vase or, if the flower is edible, eat.  

How to Prune Fruiting Plants

For non-vining varieties like determinate tomatoes or bush beans, you really only need to do maintenance pruning. For indeterminate vines (think vining tomatoes, cucumbers, and pole beans), you'll need to prune more heavily for production. Follow these simple steps to prune your fruiting plants for production.

Step One

The first goal is to pick one main stem. Think of your fruiting plant as a mini tree. If your plant branches out at the base, prune to one main stem within two to three weeks of planting. Simply select the largest stem to be the main provider. Prune back any new stems that sprout from the base of the plant. 

Step Two

When the first flower appears, prune all leaves and stems below. Pruning this excess foliage tells your plants to focus on creating more flowers instead of leaves. If you're growing peas, you can eat all those yummy pea shoots!

Step Three

Every two weeks, prune the lower leaves on the vine, removing about a third of the plant’s leaves. Sure, leaves are what store power from the sun and help create energy for the plant, but our goal is to keep the fewest amount of leaves possible. Remember, each leaf is something that needs support, water, and other nutrients from the plant, and you’d rather have your plant spend those resources on more flowers and fruit than more leaves. 

If you look at the cherry tomatoes growing up my arch trellises each summer, you'll notice the plants have hardly any leaves on the bottom. There are still many leaves up top. And guess what else is up top? Lots of fruit clusters.

Step Four

Prune suckers if you want larger fruit, and leave suckers if you’d like more fruit. Read more about pruning suckers on tomato plants. When in doubt, prune any stems that look nonproductive.

Step Five

Two to three weeks before the season changes, top off the vines. Look for the highest cluster of fruit on the each stem and cut right above. Your plant will have likely spent over 75 or even 90 days in the garden at this point and will be slowing its growth. It should be full of fruit, most of which will have yet to ripen, so your main goal now is to tell the plant to finish ripening all that yummy fruit.

Following these steps is how I achieved a higher tomato yield after that first year with no fruits to show for my efforts.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means I earn a small profit if you click on the link and purchase the recommendations.

The 3 Types of Pruners Every Gardener Needs

I recommend having at least three different pruners. The first, and most important pruner for the kitchen garden, is a needlenose pruner, which allows you to get into the plant’s interior to cut just what you want and to harvest carefully.

The second is a larger pruner to use on really big plants or to cut through thick stems like the base of a large cabbage plant.

Lastly, you need a tiny pair of pruners, or pocket snips, to harvest lettuce greens or microgreens. 

Time to Head Outside and Do Some Pruning

You know how some people get the urge to cut their hair whenever they're really stressed out? It's like we feel this need to chop something off when life gets to be a little too much. Well, unless you really need a trim, save your money and go outside to prune instead. I'm telling you, I feel so much better after doing some pruning in the garden (and it's just not sustainable for me to get a haircut every time I feel stressed).

Beyond stress relief, there are so many reasons to prune in the garden. It's your first line of defense against pests and the best way to maintain a beautiful and thriving space.

But perhaps the best thing about all that pruning is that you often end up with lots of yummy leaves and fruits to take inside and eat. With regular, careful pruning, you tell your plants who’s boss and ensure you’ve got lots of delicious harvests for weeks to come.

Happy pruning! Thanks so much for helping bring back the kitchen garden with me!