Pruning roses is a must. If you want to grow roses, you will certainly have to prune them. Folks tend to think pruning roses is complicated. Actually, it is quite simple. The outcomes can be awesome. Roses in fact very tough plants, so much so, if you make every pruning mistake in the book, your roses will be better off than if you had not pruned them at all.
Roses must be pruned for a number of reasons. The main reasons have to do with keeping the plant healthy, maintaining the plants beauty and attempting to keep the plant from getting out of bounds, which could happen within a very short period of time, especially the taller varieties.
Proper pruning practices give you large beautiful flowers atop robust, tall stems, excellent for cut flowers. A good general rule of thumb is the further back you cut a rose bush, the lesser number of, though bigger flowers you will get, and they are going to be on taller, tougher stems. Prune less, and you receive smaller flowers yet more of them.
Pruning removes diseased or damaged parts of the plant. It also keeps the plant more open in the center, increasing air flow and minimizing pest problems.
If pruning does not occur, a large number of rose plants get to huge and monstrous. They can truly take over and swallow up any little plants in its path. Pruning keeps them where they are suppose to be.
And so, when is the most effective time to prune you ask. Well, at any time when the weather is right and you possess the time. You need to do it yearly and during the appropriate season. Just before growth begins in late winter or early spring, precise timing is dependent upon your geographical area and your environment. This is the best season for the major pruning. If you do the main pruning and do it properly, then you should not have much to do during the remainder of the season over and above cutting the spent roses off and taking pleasure in the magnificent beauty of the rose.
Where winter temperatures are 10 degrees or lower, you should delay to prune until after the coldest weather has passed and any winter injury to the plant has occurred. March or April tend to be the best time to prune for most people.
In pruning a rose plant, get rid of all dead or damaged canes, these will be the dark brown or grey colored canes, the shriveled looking and small scraggly looking twigs. Get rid of suckers, vigorous canes will arise from the rootstock below the bud union. You will need to dig all-around at the base of the plant to totally expose the bottom of a sucker. Cut it even to the rootstock. Leave the center area of the rose bush as open as you possibly can for circulation purposes. The plant is generally sort of cup-shaped with flowering canes around the outside.
Once you have finished all the removal pruning, at this time you need to carefully consider what you want to save. The objective is to save the healthiest canes, these are the flowering canes that bloom in spring. The healthiest canes are the thicker and normally the bright green color. The quantity of flowering canes you select is dependent upon the vitality and age of the plant. Having newly planted roses, leave about three to five flowering canes. Older plants can support more. Prune the flowering canes back by about a third to a half.
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