Alright, let’s talk about messing with plants. For a long time, I kinda used the words ‘pinching’ and ‘pruning’ like they were the same thing. Just snipping bits off, right? Well, turned out my hands-on time in the garden showed me they’re pretty different jobs.
It started with my little basil plants on the windowsill. They were getting tall and leggy, just shooting straight up. I read somewhere you should ‘pinch’ them. So, I just went for it. No tools, just my fingers. I found the top set of tiny new leaves, right above a pair of bigger leaves, and gently pinched that top part off with my thumbnail and index finger. Just snapped it clean off. It felt kinda small, almost fiddly.
What happened? A couple of weeks later, where I pinched, the plant didn’t just grow one stem taller. Instead, two new little stems started growing out sideways from where the bigger leaves were. Boom! The plant started getting bushier, not just taller. More leaves overall. So, pinching, for me, became this little, delicate thing you do with your fingers on soft, new growth to make the plant branch out and get fuller.
Then there was the lavender bush out front. It survived the winter but looked kinda scraggly and woody at the bottom, with old flower stems sticking up. Just pinching wouldn’t cut it here. This needed more. So, I got out my small hand clippers, my secateurs. This felt more like real work.
I started cutting back the thicker, woodier stems. Not just the soft tips. I cut maybe a third of the plant’s size off, shaping it into a nicer mound. I also cut out any bits that looked dead or really weak. This was definitely pruning. It involved cutting older, harder stems, sometimes quite thick ones, and removing whole sections, not just the very tip. I used a tool, not just my fingers.
The goal wasn’t just making it bushy like the basil, but more about cleaning it up, giving it a good shape, getting rid of old stuff, and encouraging strong new growth from the base for the next season. It took more effort and felt like a bigger intervention.
So, yeah, after actually doing both:
- Pinching: Little snips, usually soft tips, often with just fingers. Makes young plants bushier. Feels small scale.
- Pruning: Bigger cuts, often woodier stems, usually need tools like clippers. Shapes the plant, removes dead stuff, controls size. Feels more substantial.
That’s how I figured it out, just by getting my hands dirty and seeing what happened with different plants and different ways of cutting them back. One’s a nudge, the other’s more of a haircut.
