Pruning Clematis Jackmanii -【How and when to prune】

There are many varieties of clamatis, although Clematis Jackmanii is undoubtedly one of the most widely cultivated varieties, especially in temperate zones. It is a hybrid variety that can reach up to four meters in height and produces a large number of very pretty purple flowers. Like any vine, it is important to carry out maintenance tasks, among these tasks is the pruning of your Clematis Jackmanii, which we will talk about in this article.

In the past we already wrote another article about pruning a clematis, it was specifically about montana clematis. So if once you have finished reading this article you want to know more about the subject, I invite you to read it, since there are many similarities between Clematis montana and Clematis jackmanii.

1. Why to prune Clematis Jackmanii

Depending on the type of plant in question, pruning provides one or other benefits. Although it is not a totally essential task, this is demonstrated by the fact that in their natural environment they live perfectly without being pruned, if you have plants like this vine in your garden you should prune them.

Among the benefits of pruning your clematis jackmanii we can detail the following:

• Improves plant health.
• Promotes better development of new shoots.
• Increases the quantity and quality of flowering.
• Allows you to control the size and shape of the vine.
• Makes the plant receive a greater flow of air and sunlight inside.

As you can see there are many positive aspects of pruning, let’s now see when and how to carry it out.

2. What pruning tools do you need?

To carry out any task in your garden you need certain tools, and pruning is no exception. To properly prune your Clematis jackmanii you will need the following:

• Hand Pruning Shears: Stems up to half inch in diameter can be pruned with hand shears.

• Hedge Shears: Manual and power shears are available for trimming hedges. Manual shears have long, flat blades with relatively short handles and are good for small jobs. Electric shears are a good choice for larger hedges.

• Lopping Shears: It is suitable to use on stems between half inch and 2 inches in diameter.

• Saws: A number of pruning saws are available. These saws come with either curved or straight blades and of variable lengths and points. Curved blades that cut on the draw stroke are easy to use.

Depending on some factors such as the age of the plant, its size or the type of pruning, you should opt for one or another of the above tools. But they all have something in common, and that is that they need to be disinfected before each task. Let’s see how to do it in the next section.

2.1 Tips for disinfecting pruning tools

There are several methods that you can use to disinfect your tools, here I have selected three of the most common and simple methods.

• Method 1: rub the scissors blades with a cloth dipped in alcohol (ethanol). After cleaning, allow the tool to sit for a couple of minutes for maximum disinfection efficiency.
• Method 2: prepare a mixture 1/9 of chlorine and water (one part of chlorine and 9 of water). Then soak the scissors for half an hour in that mixture. After those 30 minutes you can start pruning.
• Method 3: this third method is effective but from my point of view not so recommended. Here what you should do is pass the blade for a few seconds through a flame. This will disinfect but also burn the blade.

Regardless of the method you choose, do not forget to do it before each pruning, this will prevent the possible spread of diseases in your garden.

3. When to prune Clematis Jackmanii

In plants with flowers such as clematis jackmanii, to define the best time to prune them, it is necessary to understand their flowering well. For this you should know that its flowering occurs in the last weeks of summer, and occurs in the new stems. That is, the flowers will develop on the branches that grew during the last spring and summer.

Taking this into account, the beginning of spring or the end of winter can be defined as a very good time to prune. Especially strong pruning in which we remove a large amount of foliage.

Lighter pruning, such as thinning pruning, can also be done once flowering is complete. That is to say at the end of summer or beginning of winter.

For its part, cleaning pruning in which we remove dry or diseased branches can be carried out at any time of the year. As we always say on this blog, the sooner diseased branches are removed, the better, thus preventing further spread of the disease.

4. How to prune Clematis Jackmanii

This variety of clematis resists strong pruning very well, what’s more, when you do it you will see how it reacts with much stronger and healthier shoots. When we talk about strong pruning, we mean cutting all the branches of the vine to a height of between 30 and 40 cm.

As the growth of the clematis jackmanii is very fast, you will see that during the spring and summer it will cover a lot of surface. In good conditions its branches can grow about three and a half meters.

But suppose we need this vine to cover an area of ​​more than 3.5m. If so, you should not carry out a pruning as strong as the one we have just detailed. The pruning will have to be lighter so that during one or two growing seasons it is able to cover the entire surface. Once covered you can cut about three meters in length each year, so you make sure that it is always covered again.

If you see that your plant is very strong and healthy, sometimes you can do without a very strong pruning. But at least one thinning pruning should be done, this to improve air circulation and light entry to the center of the plant. Remove 1/3 of the total number of branches, always the weakest looking ones. The best time to do this is after flowering is over.

5. Clematis Jackmanii Superba pruning

We have already said that the Clematis Jackmanii is a hybrid within the Clematis vines. On the other hand, Jackmanii Superba Clematis is a more recent improved version of the original Jackmanii. There are no big differences with the original Jackmanii, the most notable being that its flowers have a deeper purple color and its size is larger.

As you can imagine, if the differences between the Jackmanii Superba and the original hybrid are not very great, the care does not vary too much either. So the pruning you should do on a Jackmanii Superba Clematis does not vary from what we have seen so far in this post.

That is, you can prune it hard at the end of winter or in the first days of spring. And then, with the flowering already finished, it is usually good to carry out a thinning pruning.

6. Video pruning Purple Clematis Jackmanii

To finish the article, in which we have thoroughly analyzed the pruning of a clematis jackmanii, we have selected a video so that you can review everything seen so far in a much more graphic way. We have taken this video from the ehowgarden channel, I hope you find it useful. 😉

More information:

• Van Zyverden Clematis Jackmanii – homedepot.com
• An Introduction to Clematis – wpengine.netdna-ssl.com
• Information about Clematis – wisc.edu
• Small tips for growing Jackmanii Clematis – hibuwebsites.com