00:00 Intro
00:40 Prune when the forsythia blooms
02:27 Reduce to 5 stems at 18"
03:43 Focus first of dead, diseased, damaged & crossing stem
05:27 Prune to outwards-facing buds
06:38 Use clean & sharp tools
08:00 Angle your pruning cuts
09:55 Open the center
I have some sort of hybrid roses in my yard. They get pruned anytime of year with a weedbeater or a Toro zero turn. Screw all those stickers.
ReplyDeleteWhen I bought my house in '96, I bought a bunch of Roses from Jackson & Perkins over the coarse of 3 years. To me, they are unforgiving, pain in the ass, disease attracting, finicky - and not to mention prickly - pain in the ass plants.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I love them!
After years & years of keeping plants I have settled on growing ones I can keep alive, some people call them weeds.
ReplyDeleteA rose is technically a weed.
DeleteI don't have any roses, what I did have was a pear tree. Due to work being done on our property a bulldozer continuously ran around or near the tree. The next year on the horizontal branches the new sprouts grew straight up towards the sky to about six feet. There were lots of em too. It was down right freaky. After some research I figured the dozer crushed the roots and the tree was stressed so the branches growing straight up were suckers. I took a chainsaw to it and cut most of the branches off. The wife thought I killed it. A few years later we had pears again lots of them.
ReplyDeleteAlex, I don't care for roses usually but I have kept one. It is called Darlow's Enigma, it is a rambling type that gets to about 4-5 tall and is bushy with small white roses with gold center about 1 1/2" wide. Very fragrant in the morning, going on 10 years in northern Illinois, so it is hardy to zone 4. None of the usual rose diseases, never blackspot, attracts bumble bees. Flowers are smaller than most roses but it grows on you. Check it out.
ReplyDeleteWhen pruning back a branch I have always followed the branch back until I find a stem coming off with five leaves. I prune about an inch before that leaving it on the branch. I haven't had roses for years but was into them at one time. As some have mentioned. They can be a pain.
ReplyDeleteDo you use summer tires or all-season tires around the base odf the roses?
ReplyDeleteI bought a house once with an old rose in the back yard, a variety called 'Mutabulis'. This once blooms continuously, and the blossoms start out pink but fade to a creamy yellow. That sucker was about 15 ft in diameter, had canes as big as my forearm. It was bigger than me, so I didn't tangle with it much - just enjoyed it and mowed around it.
ReplyDeleteThere's a wild variety here, an invasive species called Macartney Rose. Lots of really diabolical hook-shaped thorns, small, few white blooms. It was brought to the US in the 1800s to use as a natural hedge fencing for cows - but it invades pasture and is tough to eradicate, almost impossible. And it seems to reach out to grab you, and set those thorns into flesh. Ugh.
Sounds like that scoundrel multiflora rose.
DeleteThe President of the American Rose Society told me to prune roses on Valentines Day. We are in the Deep South
ReplyDeleteBought a house that had a rose. They're pretty, so, okay. Seemed like I couldn't do anything on that side of the house and not wind up giving blood. I pruned it with a shovel.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a weed. I leave them grow as area denial, no short cuts to my door. I have to keep the lawn mower running or they'll take over
ReplyDelete