I put in two new dwarf Alberta spruces about 2 months ago. 3.5 feet tall. My goal is to maintain heights no greater than 5 feet, and to have them as conical as possible to serve as Christmas trees in my garden. One of the two grew more aggressively immediately after planting and began to be a little mis-shapen... meaning less conical than it had been and a few bulges. I suppose this is a sign of a healthy planting and healthy tree. So I did a very light pruning in mid-may to coax it back to its symetrical cone shape. I did not over-prune. Maybe 2" at most and did not cut back to any non-green areas of the branches. It looks good and no ill-effects so far, but I wondered how much of a chance I took. I read that annual early-winter pruning is advised. Is anything more frequent risky or unwise? Any suggestions for maintaining a reasonable height and consistent shape? Or should I just expect that they will eventually be much taller and less conical as the years go by? Thanks. VanR
Usually serious pruning guides recommend late spring-early summer pruning of the new growth of conifers, as you have done. If the one specimen was making normal, wild spruce style growth then what happened is it reverted to typical Black Hills spruce.
There certainly seems to be variance of recommendation for pruning season. Monrovia, the distributor of the actual one I bought, indicates winter. But, your suggestion of late spring seems to have aligned with how things went with my tree as it has done fine with the pruning at this time. Any thoughts on keeping it at 5 feet-ish?
