Re: Pruning roses

Sorry about the few bloopers in there. It's just after 6.00PM here and the temp outside is 41 degrees Celsius. That's HOT.

 

I meant dead-head not just dead. And I know how to spell 'predominant' too. But seriously plenty of gardeners take roses  (and some rosarians) far too seriously.

 

trevor n.



On Fri 08/01/10 6:12 PM , margn@internode.on.net sent:

Couldn't agree more with Joe. I hardly ever prune my roses and never annually. I grow Tea roses, Bourbons, China roses, quite a few species shrubs a few Rugosa hybrids, one David Austin (Graham Stuart Thomas) and one modern shrub (Bonica). They get pruned when I judge they have too much dead or old, non-flowering wood. I most often prune immediately after flowering. I use bagged chicken poo and sawdust shovelled from the floors below layers cages or free-range sheds as much as a deep-litter mulch as a food. Most of my roses never get watered. I prefer them to 'sleep' over the hot summer months when flowers fry to a crisp the day they open. After the first big flush I dead and cut away dead branches. twigs etc and let them aestivate from December to the end of April out hot season with (usually) no rain at all and very high evaporation rates. The roses come good with the first rains and we get late autumn flowers. Yes, they look a bit  daggy by summer's end but they survive and I make sure I have plenty of other stuff to look at. I think it comes down to what roses you chose to grow that makes the difference. I do not chose on flowers alone, that is a fatal mistake. Just consider HM people planted dozens of David Austin's English Roses only to find that most of them are water-holics. It's also why I don't bother with HT's or Floribundas or carpet roses. I also make sure that roses are not the predominat plant in my gardens. When you think that they also look pretty deadly dull when the are dormant for 3-4 months they are really not worthy of the predominence given them by many gardeners.

 

cheers

 

trevor nottle


On Thu 07/01/10 10:00 AM , Joseph Seals thegardenguru@yahoo.com sent:

This is what I said in the California Gardening forum on GardenWeb:
 
"I think Californians really need to think about how, when and why they prune roses here.
 
Nobody should be surprised about the way roses act well here -- even without the copious watering, the fertilizing, the winter (or any!) pruning.
 
We've simply gone along with what the Eastern rose gardeners tell us, via magazine and books from back there. It's even too bad that the American Rose Society, through its Master Rosarian program, perpetuates these regional processes throughout the whole country.
 
Fact is, roses are simply shrubs; hybrid shrubs with the bulk of their genetics from Rosa chinensis, a subtropical evergreen rose species.
 
Being such, it really doesn't "need" pruning in the winter time. It's actually best to prune it during the growing season, much as one would do with any evergreen repeat-blooming shrub, keeping it at a size and shape we want, mostly by cutting off bloomed-out stems. As long as we cut back cleanly to some husky wood, the rose responds positively all year long. If we do this, we have minimal pruning -- and sometimes NO pruning -- to do in the winter. (You're welcome to strip off old leaves if it makes it easier for you to spray; but that assumes you have rose cultivars that get diseases.)
 
We're trapped into thinking that we need to prune roses hard (to short stubs near the ground) because that's what they do back in cold country where they think it's going to save the rose tops from cold freezes. Even that's a myth, by the way.
 
More than that, we're trapped into thinking that we need to cut off the water, let rose hips form, put on crushed ice and all kinds of silly tricks to get our roses to go into "dormancy". They won't, they can't, they're Rosa chinensis genes.
 
Beyond winter chores, we're trapped into thinking we need to fertilize roses often and heavily. Some old cutlivars maybe. The newer ones much less. When planted in heavy soil, which contains good nutrients, roses are very happy. When planted in sandy soil, roses sulk. And amending is a myth, too.
 
We've been convinced that roses need gobs of water. Roses in heavy soil, when trained with good soakings deeply and infrequently (once every 3-4 weeks in summer), become extraordinarily drought-tolerant. When planted in sand or put on a co-dependent drip system, they become sissies.
 
And there are hundreds of rose cultivars that are disease-free and have self-cleaning blossoms so maintenance is lowered even more.
 
Problem is, too many gardeners plant old problem-ridden cultivars, plant them in sandy soil, waste their time with amendments, use drip systems and over-fertilize and then tell everyone how problematic roses are. Surprised?"
 
Joe


Joe Seals
Horticultural Consultant
Pismo Beach, California
Home/Office: 805-295-6039

--- On Wed, 1/6/10, Ben Wiswall wrote:

From: Ben Wiswall
Subject: Pruning roses
To: "medit plants forum"
Date: Wednesday, January 6, 2010, 2:14 PM

Hi All,
Normally at this time of year I prune the shrub roses back by about half, sacrificing their last batch of flowers so that by Spring they are ready to bloom again on fresh new growth.  This year, however, I have relatives visiting on January 17th from the snowbound East, and thought I'd gloat a little with a garden full of rose blossoms.  Will I compromise the roses' performance by delaying their annual pruning to the end of January?
Thanks,
Ben Armentrout-Wiswall
Simi Valley, inland Ventura County
Southern California 

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