Pruning and deadheading

[PinkCamelias]

I am not sure when to prune my wisteria. I wanted to do it this week, but it’s still flowering, even if sparsely. I will be gone for the whole August and I will be able to prune it in the beginning of September. Then I will prune again in winter. What would you do?

And would you deadhead mop head and lace cap hydrangeas now? The flowers lost the colour due to the heat. I usually do it after winter, but it’s early in summer for them to look so faded. I don't suppose they would re bloom though?

The long whippy growth that need pruning off your Wisteria now won’t be the branches with flowering spurs. I’d t on and prune as you’ll probably see the flowers better too. Hydrangeas generally don’t reflower but if we get some rain who knows. I’d leave them alone and enjoy the flower heads over the winter.

Thank you @AlwaysGardening ! The flowers are on the whippy growth though. The first flush was before it, but this repeated flowering is along the new growth. Photo is not great because the plant is tall and I held my phone as high as I could. There’s some more flowers on the top too.

I'd be surprised if the flowers are on this year's growth as it can take a few years to build up the flowering spurs. There's plenty in the second photo to prune off which doesn't have flowers on it.

I am quite confused by this wisteria, @AlwaysGardening. It’s old and when we bought the house, it was huge and covered in flowers on a mass of tangled, thin branches (photos attached). I know that it hadn’t been pruned at all in the previous year. I pruned it in winter and next spring it didn’t flower at all! I pruned the mass of whippy growth in summer and then again in winter and it did flower this year, but nothing compared to when I saw it first. I just don’t know how to treat it!

Mine has flowered on this years growth. I know I've not pruned mine when I should but it seems to be ok. I'm currently waiting for some landscaping to be done in my garden so I can put in an arch over the path and train it properly over it as well as along the fence. Mine must be close to 30 years old and has taken quite a bit of neglect over that time, but it is glorious when in flower.

Interesting. Can you take a photo of one of those whippy growths with a flower on it? Appreciate you might need more than one pair of hands!

That’s exactly what our wisteria looks like now. Its only 5 years old and it’s had the same second flowering on the whippy bits. I’m leaving it to it as it looks quite pretty.

Is this ok?

Pollyanna Wilkinson on instagram demonstrated what to do with wisteria couple of weeks ago. I must say, she made it look simple but mine doesn’t really match hers so who knows whether I’ve done it properly! Plus I couldn’t reach a lot of it so will have to get up a ladder to finish off.

But it seems for now you count five or six buds on the side shoots and cut back to them, leaving the woody main stems.

It's the bit that the flower is actually coming from I'd like to see.

Hopefully these are what you are after

I can see the new growth in the middle picture and above that is two or three year old growth. I can't see that the new flowers are on this year's whippy growth, so pruning now isn't going to remove the flowers.

@AlwaysGardening my plant flowers just like @longtompot’s one, and it’s certainly new growth, because in February it was pruned like this. Now what’s on the photos is covered in a frankly unmanageable mass of new growth. I pruned what I could reach, leaving the flowering branches, but I can see literally no difference in volume… This winter I will have to significantly reduce the plant, cut some of the old branches visible on these photos, and make a new, hopefully smaller framework.

Same as @PinkCamelias This was the same plant in April this year, so all the greenery with the flowers is on this years growth