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hey everybody it's Katherine with
Colorado yard care and today I'm going
to show you how to cut back Russian sage
in spring so as you can see this is a
Russian sage plant and keep in mind it's
a sub sub so what that means is that the
bottom of the plant stays alive from
year to year and then it dies back from
the tips of the branches back to
somewhere in the middle of the stem over
the winter time so let's just take a
look if you break this off see how it's
really dry and brittle that means it's
dead and will keep going down the stem
still dead and then when we get
somewhere down you know to the middle of
the plant or a little bit farther it's
flexible and that means that that
portion of the plant is still alive so
if you don't do anything to cut back
Russian sage what happens is that the
new growth comes up from the lower
branches and mixes with all the dead
growth up top and it looks like you've
got green and brown stems mixing
together so our goal here is to take off
all the dead growth while preserving the
integrity of the shrub so there's really
two ways to approach it
let's talk about the first way the first
way is to cut off the dead portion from
the died over the winter and preserve
the the part of the shrub that's still
alive so with that what you would do is
you come in and you look for a set of
tiny leaves and just cut off the stem
right there so once again we look for
the set of leaves that are just about to
come out and cut right above and see
that just removes the old portion of the
stem that's dead and you do that across
all these branches you can use this
method anytime even if the leaves have
already started to emerge on the plant
so say you're coming in and may or or
even June and you're a little late
cutting everything back well you can
still tip through this method because
you're not really cutting into live wood
you're just cutting off the dead portion
so once you have already cut off all the
dead portions of the stem then what you
want to do is come back into the plant
and cut off any stems that are too tall
or too short so the plant looks more
symmetrical so here we have one on the
outside let's just bring this down a
little bit any exterior stems just bring
them in slightly so they're not sticking
out way far along the plant and this
just makes the plant seem a little bit
more spherical symmetrical and tidy this
is also a really good method to use if
you live in a high elevation area or a
cold part of Colorado where things take
a really long time to grow this
preserves all of the the growth that
you've got last year but cleans the
shrub up ok so let's talk about method
to method to is where we just come into
the shrub and essentially cut all of
these stems back to ground level and
this can seem really scary to do if
you've never done it before but it works
really well and here's why if you look
at the base of this shrub you can see
that we've used this method on this
plant before these were the old woody
stems that we're getting really thick
and old and see what happened is that
after we cut it back we got new growth
coming from the base of the plant and
these stems were nice and fresh and very
straight and it makes the plant look
rejuvenated so if you want to use this
method what you do is you just bring
your pruners and essentially just cut
off all these stems right at ground
level don't worry about leaving
two to three inches of stem sticking up
it's not necessary because the plan tree
grows from the crown which is right at
ground level so just be bold and come in
and take everything off you could use
this method if you need to rejuvenate a
plant that's gotten really old or you
can use this method on Russian sage
every growing season and will keep
everything looking fresh and clean all
right that's the second method if you're
going to use that method make sure that
you cut off the stems before the leaves
come out in spring so you need to get to
that by say March or the first part of
April so when you're getting back
Russian stage and you're deciding which
method to use keep in mind that you can
alternate between methods as you see fit
so if you have a plant that really needs
to be rejuvenated feel free to cut it
back to ground level and if the year
after that you want to instead just cut
it back to the to the live growth that
works as well and so don't feel like
you're locked into one method year after
year you can switch around okay
everybody that's how you cut Russian
sage back in spring thanks so much for
watching I hope it was useful to you if
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