Prune the Lady of the Night: [Importance, Time, Tools, Considerations and Steps]

The lady of the night is a plant species that grows in the form of a bush and whose most determining characteristic is the delicious aroma it emits.

It is also known as a gallant at night in some areas or by its scientific name: cestrum nocturnum .

It grows with a good rhythm, which allows to organize an annual pruning to control the whole environment. If you want to know the details to be successful in this task, write down everything that we will tell you in the following lines.

Why prune the lady at night?

The pruning of the lady at night serves two main objectives:

1. Ensure that flowering is in better conditions and that annual capacity can be maximized, even achieving two flowering periods in the same year.
2. Remove all parts that are in poor condition and make the bush unsightly while posing a general health hazard.

When is it better to carry out lady pruning at night?

This specific pruning can be divided into two phases: one at the end of winter and the other at the beginning of summer.

Late winter pruning is the most intense and its main function is to reduce the size of the bush to allow a new structure to grow.

Through this younger structure, the plant will bloom better in spring and will not take up more space than you have allocated for it.

In the case of summer pruning, this is optional and what you are looking for is for the plant to perform a new flowering cycle at the end of this season. This time it is a lighter pruning that will still offer many benefits of doing it well.

What tools should we use to prune the lady at night?

Being a small shrub and more or less thin branches, all you need will be pruning shears, a saw and gloves. 

Scissors and saw should be sharp to facilitate cuts and avoid extra damage to the plant structure . Also, it will help you finish faster. It is necessary that they are disinfected to prevent the spread of diseases or create the ideal space for the establishment of fungi.

In some cases, when the wounds are very thick, it is advisable to use a healing paste to help them heal faster.

What considerations should we take into account when pruning the lady at night?

The first thing is to assess the state in which the bush is before starting the pruning and how long we expect to cut with the execution. In late winter pruning , which is the most intense, more parts of the plant are usually removed, usually aiming for the result to be a rounded bush.

However, everything will depend on the characteristics of the specimen you have and what you hope to achieve. Another important point is to have the tools available at hand before starting , ensuring that they are sharp and sanitized.

How to prune a lady at night without damaging the plant?

A good news that we should know before starting the pruning is that the lady of the night recovers with incredible speed for being very resistant . So, the limitations around the amount of bush to cut are very few. We will only have to take into consideration the following:

• Ensure that the main and secondary branches are well established by cutting back enough but checking that they are left with some leaves.
• Avoid that the main base of the bush is cut at ground level because it is most likely that from there it will not be able to recover.

To facilitate the execution of the process, it works like this:

1. Start by trimming the branches that stick out the most from the bush , especially those that are in bad position or look messy. Include branches that are colliding or entangling each other here.
2. Remove branches that are in poor condition, dry, wilted or diseased . These you should remove them from the base of their birth because they represent a risk factor.
3. Brighten the center of the bush a little by removing parts of branches that block the flow of air and light , since the lack of these elements inside facilitates the formation of diseases.

A similar procedure is applied in summer pruning, although the main idea there is to renew the conditions of some branches, therefore, it is a light pruning. The fundamental idea of ​​all this is that the lady at night shrub is in optimal conditions to produce flowers and give that exquisite aroma.

And this is very easy to achieve by offering simple care such as pruning at the appropriate times, fertilizations and a good space.