I’d love to connect with you! Sign up for my monthly newsletter, "Garden Bliss & Blunder”
OTHER ROSE PRUNING TIPS
HOME
HOW ROSES GROW.. .
- Pruning roses encourages new growth and more blooms
- You won’t kill a healthy rose with bad pruning; mistakes usually grow out in a season or two.
- Better to prune than not (but there is no one rule for all roses whether the same type, season or zone.
- Spring: wait till Forsythia blooms or the temperatures are constantly 10C or 55F.
In the spring, remove all remaining leaves so you can see the canes; it also removes pests or diseases that may be overwintering there.
- Take out the Dead: because it is easy- you can see it...
Use anvil pruners for this.(TOOLS)
Not sure it's dead?
Gently scratch the bark with your fingernail
- living = green; dead = brown.
Either cut back the green stem to just above a bud-eye
or back to the ground if it is all dead.
- Prune out crossing canes or those that can rub and cause damage leaving the cane open to disease or burrowing insects.
- Remove thin or weak growth... twiggy bits or thin as a pencil (unless the rose is a mini or a small ground cover rose.
- Choose height that fits your garden. In the back of the border, you might want it to be taller.
- Note: Hybrid tea = the lower you prune, the bigger the bloom... and longer the stems; you'll get more blooms but they will be smaller.
- Clean upbranches and leaves from ground especially those with Black Spot or any fungal issues..
- New modern roses are not prone to disease so no real need to clean out the centre except 4D’s
- "Groom" or trim them any time during growing season.
It's hard to kill a rose by pruning it but take that with a grain of salt; your roses want to live so pruning properly can only make them better.
Photo by Gail Trimble of the Marin Rose Society .
If you can, make a cut with a downward angle. This was thought to keep the cane from rotting - but it is not always possible when pruning deep inside the bush.
In the past few years, much research and work have created new, hardy, easy-care roses bred to resist disease.. so the downward angle is really more important for those lovely old fashioned Tea Roses.
This doesn't mean you don't have to be careful but it does mean the new roses will tolerate more.
More importantly, decide which direction you want the branch to grow and cut just above a bud that faces that way and the branch will grow.
