How should I prune my roses?

Answer 1

Prune your roses lightly in autumn, removing canes long enough to be whipped by winter winds and those canes with signs of disease. Pruning to remove remaining dead, diseased, and damaged canes is done in early to mid-March just before growth starts. Species and climbing roses are pruned by removing entire canes all the way to the ground to encourage an open, vase-shaped habit. The rest of the roses get pruned to knee height at an outward facing bud. You can do some light pruning to shape the plants during the summer as needed.

Answer 2

make sure your clippers are sharp and if this is a problem buy new one's. If you have a lot to prune hand test clippers and pick one's that are comfortable and feel OK. Cut branches to shape the bush in a style pleasing to you. Cut out branches that cross over to give the bush a more open look. Cut at an angle so that rain will not be directed onto a bud. Cut close to a bud otherwise the branch will die back. I do some of my pruning when I cut for flowers. Make sure you remove the cut branches as they get even sharper when dry. So have fun and perhaps only tackle a few bushes at a time as it is quite a iob and sometimes better to come back to it and touch up where you have been...... reward will be more flowers

Answer 3

One of the tips I have heard is that you prune back to a branch that has like 5 leaves on it. The top ones will only have like 3 or so. By doing that I believe it forces it to create more flowers. I'm not an expert on roses, but I'd recommend asking someone about the number of leaves and how far you cut back regarding that.

Answer 4

One thing that has been left out of the previous tips is that when trimming the canes, you find an outward facing bud, and cut about 1/4"-3/8" above that bud, at a downward angle, this way your new growth will be towards the outside of the plant.
This will keep your plant with the "open" look about it, and the plant will be fuller and healthier as air can circulate through it to prevent fungus or mold.
Make sure your clippers are sharp, and clean them with soap when finished to keep from spreading any fungus from plant to plant.

Answer 5

difficult issue. lookup into yahoo and bing. that will may help!

Answer 6

with clippers.

The Stig

Answer 7

Pruning is a way of fine tuning and controlling the plants growth. It helps to reduce diseases, keeping the plant shape attractive and also regulates blooming.

Pruning your roses is simple and easy! I have written a few suggestions on how I prune my roses, but remember, these are only suggestions. If you ask a 100 people how to prune a rose bush, you will get a 101 different answers. One good thing to remember is that you will never kill a rose bush by pruning it!

You can also leave a rose bush for many years without pruning and it will very likely grow and bloom just fine.

I'll tell you how we recommend our customers prune their roses. I consider this to be the safest and easiest method until you gather enough experience or courage to go your own way. The traditional method of pruning the average modern rose consists of removing what we call the "Four D's". With some fine-tuning, this method can be used for almost all types of roses.

Damaged

Cut out any wood that has broken off during winter or been rubbed by another stem. If open wounds are left, these canes tend to produce fewer flowers and are prone to galls and other diseases moving in.

Diseased

If you notice canes with unusual growths or cankers on them, they should be cut down to sound wood. Downy mildew can leave heavy purplish blotches on canes and these canes should also be cut down. I've noticed a few varieties such as the beautiful 'Sally Holmes' shrub rose that tend to have canes with purplish blotches on them. Since my bushes have not been afflicted with downy mildew for a couple of seasons and I don't know of any disease that causes this, I have opted to leave those canes alone. I'm guessing that it's a slight winter damage or just the nature of some varieties as they age. If you have a better explanation, let me know on that one!

Decadent

I had to look up this word in the dictionary! According to Webster's, it means "decaying or deteriorating". If your bushes display this type of event, I would cut this wood to the crown as its unlikely to support decent flowers. You'll notice older canes by their darkened colour and also rougher texture when compared with current seasons growth. It takes a bit of time to decide when these canes have outlived their productivity, but removing them helps make way for the vigorous new basal breaks.

Climbers, shrubs and Old Garden Roses the do have canes that live much longer than Hybrid Teas or Floribundas, so you should judge accordingly. Mini roses also can become tangled with this old wood, so they should be managed in the same way.

Dead

Just to confuse you here, I will say that in almost all cases, you should cut dead wood to the crown. But, with many of the Old Garden Roses in my yard, I've found it to be very beneficial to leave the old dead wood under the plant to help support it. I've read this in a few books, mostly from Old Rose enthusiasts who claim from experience that the old wood doesn't become diseased as with modern roses, but acts as a frame to support lax growth. My own collection of Ogr's consist of several healthy bushes having armloads of dead twiggy growth holding them up. When plants leaf out in the spring, they cover up any of this otherwise unsightly mess. This method suits me fine, but might drive the tidy gardener over the edge. Do what you feel is best for your type of garden.

Tools

Buy a set of pruners that you can afford and fits into your garden budget. The ten-dollar pruners will do the same job in skilled hands as my eighty-dollar Felco pruners, but won't last as long. I use my pruners almost daily, for ten months of the year, so Felcos are worth it to me. If you have many bushes with larger canes, a pair of loppers and or also a small pruning saw is very useful. I've found the moderately priced corona saw to be an excellent tool for larger jobs. During pruning, it's important to keep your tools sharp and oiled. This helps them cut better and with less effort. If your hands don't have as much power as they used to, it might be worth it to purchase a set of "Anvil" style pruners. These are said to crush the canes, but are very useful in many areas were rough cuts are suitable. They take far less power to cut and would be perfectly suited for shrub roses or Old Garden Roses. I also use them for topping the bushes by 1/3 in the fall. My cleaner cutting "by-pass" pruners are then used in the spring.

They tell us to disinfect our pruners with either rubbing alcohol or Lysol. I can't say for certain that I've never spread disease among the roses from pruning, but with great honesty I don't dip my pruners unless I'm taking cuttings in the greenhouse or dealing with a plant I know to be seriously diseased.

Making the Cut

This is the most worrisome part of pruning that just needs a common sense approach. The amount you cut down each healthy rose cane depends on the way you like to garden and the type of rose you have. In some years, we are forced to cut most of our modern roses down low, because of winter damage. You can tell if a cane has been damaged in winter by the colour of the inside "pith". Make a clean cut and check to see if the colour is white or brownish. Some old canes on climbers and shrubs will have a slight brownish colour inside, but will still produce a healthy rose. When dealing with Hybrid Teas and Floribundas, I've found that these brown canes usually die back further in the season, so it's best to cut them down to clean white wood.

If the winter has been mild, we're blessed with many choices come pruning time and I generally cut my modern roses down by about 2/3 their original height. I'm told that constant hard pruning of rises will shorten their life while pruning a rose too high each year gives you a nasty looking plant with few basal breaks to replace aging canes.

People can lead very convincing debates on both sides of rose pruning. Both sides have merit and we try to take the best from these methods. If you're still uncertain, remember one thing, you can kill a rose by many ways, but pruning is not one of them. Try to use common sense and look at the way the plant is growing and how you would like it to grow. If it's far too big, then cut it down to size. If the wood is sound and the plant is smaller, then let the foliage do its job and feed your rose. One last thing never let anyone tell you that you've pruned your roses wrong! If they insist their way is better you can simply say with a smile "Oh, are people still doing it that old way?"

Defoliating Roses
This is something that many recommend but few actually practice.

There are pros and cons to each side. I've found that any foliage left on the bush tends to fall off by early march, and the remaining should be picked up at this time. Pruning your roses also gets rid of many of the old leaves and canes that over-winter disease spores.

The modern roses, such as Hybrid Teas, are easy to defoliate since they don't have as much foliage to begin with. If you have the time, it wont hurt anything to defoliate your roses, so have fun!