Pruning Rose Bushes
Tips for Pruning Rose Bushes
Pruning rose bushes is a necessity if you want to keep them healthy, tame, and beautiful. Yet many of us fear taking the shears to our rose bushes because we fear that we may damage our American Beauties. In fact, however, when it comes to roses you must follow the old pruner’s maxim: “Spare the sheers, spoil the bush.”
Therefore, here are some helpful buds of advice we hope you may allow to grow into gardening habits.
The Best Seasons for Pruning Rose Bushes
Experienced rose gardeners know to trim their rose bushes twice a year, once at the beginning of spring (or late in winter just before the weather is about to turn) and then again in the middle of summer. Pruning rose bushes in early spring allows the plants to focus their limited energies on new and healthy growths rather than waste them on futile limbs. Plant economy, like our own economy, should emphasize growth. A plant whose owner doesn’t manage it well, will fail under weight of its own thorns.
The summer cut is far more controversial amongst those of us that love this thorny bush. Pruning rose bushes a second time in the middle of summer, after the bush is done growing, allows it to bloom a second time. This old trick has allowed professional growers a second late summer windfall for generations. However, I would not recommend it for beginners because there is definitely a sweet spot in summer when the rose bush is asking for such a second pruning. Beginners, however, inevitably miss this spot, pruning before the plant is done with its spring growths or too late in summer to allow the bush to grow fully before Father Winter comes to breathe his cold, soporific mist over the rose beds.
Tips for Pruning
Rose bushes are heartier than gardeners give them credit for being. Pruning rose bushes actually makes them even heartier. The key to making rose bushes healthy and hearty is to air them out. A healthy rose bush is one whose thorns you keep at hand’s length from catching on each other.
If you have never pruned your rose bushes they may be a tangled mess whose shoots rub against its own shoots and whose thorns catch on the shoots of other bushes, promiscuously spreading pestilence and frailty from plant to plant, and bed to bed. Such bushes will bloom weakly. Their buds will bring forth fewer flowers, with duller and sicklier petals, prone to blemishes, drooping and shriveling.
When you prune such bushes you should observe the following rules (as you grow more accustomed to your rose bush’s idiosyncrasies, of course, you should allow your own judgment to bend or even break these rules as you see fit).
The Rule of Thirds: one of long standing rules of thumb for pruning rose bushes is the rule of thirds. Never cut a rose bush by more than a third of its full growth and never cut more than one in three stems of a bush. Doing either of these will force your rose bushes to do more work than necessary and creates opportunities for bush death from stressed plants.
Bury the Dead First: begin trimming by taking out the dead stems (they will be gray and black). This will allow you to get a clearer sense of the healthy branches. Once you have cleared the dead you will be able to spot the weaker and diseased stems, and then cut them as well.
No Touching: you should also cut stems that rest on each other. Let there be air between stems. Branches that touch spread disease and hamper each other’s growth. Identify the healthier branch and cut the other.
Leave Leaves: Finally, when cutting roses off a stem, the way to get new roses to regrow is to leave some leaflets on the stem. If you cut the stem too far down, the stem may not grow back. If you leave some leaflets, those little solar panels will feed the stem’s growth and power the bloom’s return.
Two Final Cuts
Always cut a 45 degree angle that faces up and out from the center of the plant to encourage directional growth.
Pruning rose bushes is a much less hazardous endeavor with proper pruning gloves. A hot summer garden already takes much of our sweat; it need not take our blood and tears as well.