Pruning Roses
If you are going to grow roses in the yard or in containers, you are going to have to learn about pruning roses. This is a prerequisite if you intend to have healthy roses with abundant flowers. Yet, some people are so passionate in their distaste for pruning roses that they never manage to complete the task.
If truth be known, many gardeners are afraid of pruning roses. They are afraid of taking off too much or too little, or of making the plant look bad. But most of all they are afraid of killing the roses. If you are one of these people, stop worrying. Roses are a very hardy plant and pruning roses is not going to kill them.
Pruning roses is necessary to remove the dead stalks and any that are decaying or diseased. It makes for more and better quality flowers. Roses that are allowed to grow out of control not only spread into an unsightly patch but start having small flowers and then eventually none at all.
Spring is the time to take care of pruning, before the roses have started to grow for the new year. The only equipment you need to complete the job is pair of hook and blade pruners and a handsaw with fine teeth, if you have large, dead canes that need cutting. Anvil-type pruners do not work well with roses and can damage stems so make sure to use the hook and blade type.
The first thing you should do is remove the dead wood. The dead wood is brown and dark colored while the healthy wood is green and will have live buds that are just starting to swell. You should make the cuts approximately an inch below the darker colored area and a quarter inch above an outward facing live bud. If there are not any live buds on the whole cane, remove it all. After you have made your cut you can see the inside of the live section of branch and it should be white. If it is tan or darkening in color, remove it as the branch will eventually die.
The next step in pruning roses is to cut out weak-looking canes and any that are growing toward the center of the bush instead of toward the outside. The point is to open up the inside of the rose bush so that it can get more light and air. The final stage in pruning roses is to cut all of the strong, healthy canes that are left so that they are equal in height. For instance, if you have a hybrid tea plant, the recommended height is twelve to eighteen inches. Floribundas and other types of rose plants can be trimmed less and left in the sixteen to twenty-four inch range.
The pruning of shrub and climbing roses should be done just after they have blossomed. Old and thin canes need to be removed so that new canes can grow. If these are pruned early in the spring it will inhibit the plant’s flowers as buds form on old growth on these types of plants.
Lastly, if you have planted grafted stock and you have suckers growing out of the rootstock, you need to dig carefully underground and pull the suckers off. If you don’t, the suckers could become so vigorous that they can inhibit growth or kill the rose plant. Do not cut off suckers as this is the same as trimming them back and they will come back even healthier.