If you've got zucchini in your vegetable garden, you know that the plants can get downright jungle-y as they hit their prime. So you might be wondering if you should prune your zucchini plants, particularly if you want a hearty harvest to bake up a batch of zucchini bread and muffins. "Zucchini can benefit from occasional pruning, though it's not always necessary," says Rebecca Sears, CMO of Ferry-Morse. Here's everything you need to know about when and how to prune zucchini plants.
- Rebecca Sears is the CMO and resident green thumb of Ferry-Morse.
- Margaret Tuttle McGrath is an associate professor emeritus, School of Integrative Plant Science, Plant Pathology, and Plant-Microbe Biology Section at Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
How Pruning Can Help Zucchini Plants
If you're garden is crowded, you over-planted zucchini, or the plant's leaves are touching the ground and staying wet, it might be a good idea to prune them lightly. Trimming zucchini plants can help improve air flow and make harvesting easier, especially in smaller garden spaces.
Some visual cues that you should get out the garden shears: Yellowing leaves on your zucchini plant, fruit that's hard to find under heavy foliage, and powdery mildew (white dust on the leaves).
When and How Often to Prune Zucchini Plants
Be sure the plant is well-established and producing flowers before you start pruning. Then, wait until there hasn't been rain for a few days and none is forecast in the near future. You want to prune in dry weather so the cuts heal faster; trimming creates an opening that makes the plant more prone to developing a fungal infection and damp conditions increase that risk.
If you decide to trim your zucchini plants, every one to two weeks should be often enough.
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How to Trim Zucchini Plants
Prune with a gentle hand, taking this approach from Sears.
- Cut, don’t tear. Use clean, sharp garden shears or pruners to snip off yellowing or lower leaves at the base of their stems. Snip close to the stem without damaging the main stalk, and never cut the central growing tip.
- Remove only the oldest leaves. These are usually the ones touching the soil or yellowing.
- Only cut a few leaves at a time. Avoid pruning more than 25% of the plant. Zucchini needs its leaves to fuel production. It's also a good idea to wear garden gloves if the variety has spiny stems or leaves.
- Disinfect your pruners. It's important to disinfect pruners periodically, but it's especially vital if you cut diseased leaves, as you don't want to spread disease.
Bottom line: Pruning can help improve air flow to zucchini plants and make them easier to harvest, but it won't give you a higher yield or necessarily impact whether the plants develop powdery mildew, especially if they're well-spaced.
In fact, some experts—like Margaret Tuttle McGrath, associate professor emeritus at the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University—say they never trim their zucchini at all. Her solution for space-challenged gardens: "I grow a yellow squash variety, Zephyr, that can become long and take up more space than I want, so I trellis my squash plants."
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