I know that it is only the middle of March, and we could still get snow, but watching the snow melt away does the heart good and tells me that spring is on the way. I even noticed that my crocuses were starting to make an appearance this past week.
There is always such a list of garden chores that need to be tackled as spring arrives. One of those jobs is pruning your roses.
Proper pruning not only keeps your rose bushes looking neat and well-maintained but also ensures they remain healthy, vibrant and capable of producing abundant blooms.
Why prune roses?
- Encouraging healthy growth: Regular pruning removes dead, damaged, or diseased wood, which helps prevent the spread of pests and diseases. By pruning away unhealthy sections, the plant can then spend that energy on producing new growth and vibrant blooms.
- Promoting better air circulation: Pruning away crowded stems improves air circulation around the plant. This helps to prevent fungal diseases like powdery mildew and black spot, which thrive in stagnant environments.
- Enhancing flowering: Pruning encourages more flowers. When you remove spent flowers and old growth, the plant responds by producing new growth that then will produce more flower buds.
When to prune
It is best not to do any pruning on your roses in the fall, but to leave the last flowers of the season remain on the plant.
By letting the end-of-season flowers remain on the plant, it signals to the plant its time has finished for the season and it is time for it to go dormant for the winter.
Roses are slow to go dormant in late fall and early winter. You will often see them still blooming into December and with their leaves still being green into January.
Therefore, you should always let the last flowers of the fall remain on the plant because this signals the rose bush that it is time for them to go to sleep for the winter.
Pruning in the fall will stimulate them to keep growing into the winter and will result in more dieback on the canes.
The best time to prune your roses is late dormant period-early spring just as the leaf buds are starting to swell. A good indicator of the proper pruning time is when the Forsythia plants come into bloom.
How to prune hybrid teas, grandiflora and floribunda roses
Step 1: Remove any dead, diseased or damaged branches first. Cut any diseased or damaged back past the damaged area to just above a healthy bud.
Step 2: Cut off any weak branches, or branches that are coming out from below the graft area (knuckle at bottom of stems).
Step 3: Remove stems that are closely crossing each other or branches that are rubbing against each other.
Step 4: Remove stems that cross through the center of the plant.
Step 5: Prune back remain canes, cutting to just above a healthy, outward-facing bud. By pruning to an outward-facing bud, it controls the direction of growth to go out from the plant, instead of it growing back through the center of the plant.
This helps improve air circulation which helps to cut down on diseases. Leave at least three to five buds from the base of the plant and up.
Pruning climbing roses
Climbing roses do not need to be cut back as hard as hybrid teas, grandifloras and floribundas.
In fact, with climbing roses, the training of the rose is just as important as the pruning. With climbers, you want to start training the main canes from the time that you plan it.
The main canes need to be trained in a fanned-out shape, training them to run horizontally. By doing this, not only will you get flowers at the tip of the cane, but you will get flowers all along the cane.
Step 1: Remove any dead, diseased or damaged branches. Also, remove any weak canes or canes that are growing out away from the structure that you are training the rose on.
Step 2: Fasten any remaining main canes to structure in a horizontal fashion
Step 3: Off of the main canes, you will have lateral stems growing — prune back the lateral stems to two or three buds.
So, once you see the yellow forsythias coming into bloom, you will know it is time to go out and prune your roses. Hopefully, with a bit more confidence.
Joanne Young is a Niagara-on-the-Lake garden expert and coach. See her website at joanneyoung.ca
The Niagara-on-the-Lake Horticultural Society is pleased to be hosting a series of Saturday morning gardening classes, available to the public. They will be facilitated by Joanne Young and are held on Saturday mornings, and they will be running until May 31st at the NOTL Community Centre. Join us for the classes that interest you. For all the seminars details and to pre-register for the classes visit notlhortsociety.com/classes.
