Pruning is key for training plants, maintaining plant health, restricting growth, and improving the quality of flowers, stems, foliage, and fruit. Many people believe that they can chop off a few branches as needed and call it good. In reality, pruning improperly can actually do more harm than leaving plants or trees unpruned. When you prune a plant, start by removing any broken, dead, diseased, or otherwise problematic limbs by cutting them off at the point of origin or to a strong lateral shoot or branch. While the optimal pruning time will vary from one plant to the next, generally the best time to prune is late winter or early spring before the plant starts to grow again.