Pruned Caper Bushes

I want to share some of my experiences and observations about pruning caper bushes. I'm no expert on the art and science of pruning capers, what I've learned has come from just doing it, or not, as the case may be.

Here's one of my favorite plants, this is the pink flowering bush that is growing in a good sized pot in front of my house. I pruned this one a few weeks ago when it started showing signs of pushing out new growth.

Here it is just after the trim:

January 20, 2011

And a few weeks later:

February 12, 2011

Last year, a month or so after pruning:

March 31, 2010

Last year again, it turned into quite an attractive bush:

May 17, 2010

A look at the flower buds forming then:

May 17, 2010

Below, the same plant 2 years ago:

May 18, 2009

I didn't prune that plant in 2009 and you can see how silly it looks with the scraggly old stems dangling over the edge of the pot. The old stems don't really continue to grow and so they don't produce flower buds. If you cut the old stems back when the plant isn't dormant they die back quite a ways from the cut edge and may wither completely. You can see by comparing the May 2009 photo with the May 2010 photo that pruning induces a lot more vigorous new growth from the crown of the plant. If you want to harvest flower buds you want as much vigorous new growth as possible, that's where the flower buds grow. You might think that well, the 2010 plant is a year older so of course it's bigger, but a curious thing I've observed about pot grown caper bushes is that they  grow to a size that their confined root systems can support and you can't really force feed them to make them get any larger.

One thing that I'm go to experiment with this year is pinching out the tips of vigorous new green growth to try to induce more branching. I know that cutting into woody growth when the plant isn't dormant, whether from previous years growth or new woody growth, makes the stems die back, but I don't know what happens if the stems are cut before they get woody. I'm going to try that on one of my potted capers this year.

The gnarly thing shown below is one of the oldest plants that I have. I purchased this plant and one other at least 12 years ago, maybe longer (I don't remember exactly when) and they've been growing together in a succession of 3 or 4 pots of increasing size ever since. If you click on the photo and look at the very center of it, right at the line of light and shadow you might be able to see the tiny little green bud sprouting from the trunk. It always amazes me how capers can push fresh new green sprouts out of a woody old trunk or stem. A number of years ago we had a really hard freeze and all of my capers were top killed, it took quite a while for them to sprout new growth and all of it came from just above the soil level, but that year I had the most beautiful bushes ever. I've not had the courage to prune my bushes drastically enough to mimic that frost damage, but ever since then I've been far less timid about giving them a hard pruning, it really makes for a better looking and more productive plant.

February 12, 2011

Last year:

March 31, 2010

2 years ago:

May 18, 2009

That's 2 plants in one pot and that's about as big as they get year after year. These 2 plants compete with each other too much for either of them to grow vigorously enough to produce a quantity of flower buds.

The next two photos are of the most vigorous and productive plants that I'm growing. They are planted at the top of a wall with another wall behind them and face south-southwest.

February 12, 2011

This year they got pruned, although the one below never did go fully dormant and this is what it looked like just after it got pruned.

February 12, 2011

Below is the same plant last year which I didn't get around to pruning since we had a lot of rain which kept this weather wimp indoors when it was time to prune. It still grew like crazy and was already producing flowers in March. Actually, this plant continues to produce a few flowers all through the winter if left unpruned. It faces full south and the stems that hug the wall behind stay green and keep producing a few flower buds through the winter even though some parts of the plants that are more exposed get crispy from the occasional hard frost. The plants growing in the ground will still grow like crazy even if they aren't pruned and have been growing larger every year, but they look a lot prettier when they grow back from a hard pruning.  It's hard to see in the photo below but there are a few mangy looking stems trailing over the edge of the wall. Like on the potted plants, the old stems didn't continue to grow much and didn't produce very many buds.

March 31, 2010

Here's the same plant after I stopped harvesting the buds and just let the plants bloom. The bush may have grown even larger if the deer hadn't trampled it a few times, they can get on top of the wall and like to browse on the ivy that is growing there.

September 5, 2010

Here's one last example of my caper pruning. I've got a lot of plants growing in 1-gallon pots. Some of them have been stuck in their pots for something like 6 or 7 years as I continue to experiment with growing them in various spots in the ground around the garden. It's amazing how well they get along sitting in their little pots year after year. I've had some promising starts with putting a few plants in various spots around the garden only to have the deer trample them. There have been some dismal failures as well with plants refusing to grow or just simply shrinking down to nothing. But the amazing thing is how a little pot bound plant can take off when it is planted in the right situation. I've got a few new promising experiments out in the garden even now so I hope to be able to report on them later this year.

February 12, 2011

I would love to hear about your experiences growing capers, leave a comment or send me an email. Let's learn from each other!