I have a rhododendron in my front yard that is completely overgrown to the point that it is taller than the lowest point of my roof. I plan on doing some rejuvenation pruning and cutting it back so it is only about 6 feet tall. I have done research on this and everything I find, including homeguides.sfgate.com/rhododendrons-severe-pruning-62217.html mentions cutting right above latent buds, which should appear as tiny pink dots.

My problem is, I went out to start pruning and I don't see any latent buds anywhere. Other pictures I have seen seem to show them pretty clearly but there's nothing that is visible on mine. Is it possible that my rhododendron doesn't have latent buds or am I just not seeing them?

If I just start cutting in random spots and it's not near a latent bud, am I going to kill the thing?

Let me just say this...it is hard to completely kill a rhoddy without removing the entire root ball, especially a large, well established one. If you are not concerned about losing blooms for one year then cut that thing as you need to.

I did reply to this thread, however it has been rejected presumeably because I included a WWW website that supported my comments. GROWMORE is not very happy about that.

Growmore said:I did reply to this thread, however it has been rejected presumeably because I included a WWW website that supported my comments. GROWMORE is not very happy about that.

I replied to this thread less than 20 minutes after it was posted and I never saw any other comment added to it. Did you perhaps accidentally hit 'preview' but never clicked on 'Finished'? People include links to references all the time, seems unlikely that would have caused a post to just disappear.

Or, it could be that GrowMore is so new that she/he may be restricted from including a web link. Isn't there some waiting period for that? I don't really understand why, I suppose to discourage spamming? I've seen some folks work around that by including the relevant information for the link without it actually being a link.

I believe new members cannot post links until they have been a member for a certain amount of time. Sorry I do not know how much time. @Growmore you can however post an incomplete link. Welcome to NGA!

Ah, yes... I had forgotten about that feature being implemented.

robertduval14 said:

I replied to this thread less than 20 minutes after it was posted and I never saw any other comment added to it. Did you perhaps accidentally hit 'preview' but never clicked on 'Finished'? People include links to references all the time, seems unlikely that would have caused a post to just disappear.

Actually when I pressed finished, a message came up saying that someone else had replied whilst I was typing.

Mention was made about a restriction being in place concerning links, but this restriction would be lifted soon. I realise now that I should have saved my comment, edited it and reposted.

Thank you for the kind welcome to this site. I look forward to sharing my knowledge in the future.

robertduval14 said:Let me just say this...it is hard to completely kill a rhoddy without removing the entire root ball, especially a large, well established one. If you are not concerned about losing blooms for one year then cut that thing as you need to.

Thank you for the quick response! I will just go ahead and start cutting it where I want to then and see what happens.

Also, regarding posting links, I got that same message about the links since I just joined before posting. I got around that by removing the "http://" from my link. I imagine you would have to remove the "www." part too if it was in there.

clg- we would love to see some "before" and "after" photos of you Rhody project (hint, hint)!