ROSES : Proper Pruning a Thorny Job, but Now’s the Time!
Ignore the wintry appearance of things. And never mind that the roses that adorned the floats at the Rose Parade are but a memory, or even that spring is a long way off.
This weekend, and for the next few, gardeners throughout Southern California will be bracing themselves against the unseasonable cold, hands gloved, pruning and planting roses.
Why now? Because it is absolutely the best time of the year for these activities. It is the rose season.
Nurseries carry their largest selections at this unlikely time of the year. John Bauman at the Palos Verdes Begonia Farm estimates that they have 3,000 roses ready for the big planting rush--about 100 different varieties. At any other time of the year you’d be lucky to find a few dozen.
And it is a rush, because roses being sold now are dormant--but only briefly so--and most are sold bare root, that is, without any soil around their roots. It’s a special, once-a-year opportunity, and, for a gardener, better than the after-Christmas sales at department stores. By mid-February nurseries will look a little picked over, and by then the roses will have begun to leaf out and the opportunity will have passed.
Adding to this after-Christmas-sale aura is the price. Because there is no can or potting soil and because they’re so easy to ship, bare-root roses are a bargain, often costing half what they do later in the year in a nursery can.
Pruning is the other January rose ritual, and it is a job many find confusing. Last year more than 400 people turned out for a pruning demonstration sponsored by garden organizations and the City of Glendale’s Parks and Recreation Division. The organizers were so surprised that this year they’ve turned it into a regular rose and garden celebration and have moved it to the Civic Auditorium. It and a number of other rose-pruning demonstrations are listed in the box on Page 3 of this section.
Clair Martin, curator of the enormous rose garden at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, agrees with many rose experts that poor pruning is why so many roses in this area do poorly.
“There are a lot of badly pruned roses out there,” he says.
“People tend to look at rose pruning as if it were a religious rite instead of just another garden job. They revere the roses too much and are reluctant to throw out a rose that isn’t doing well, or to prune it back in line. Some roses just won’t do well here and should be discarded,” he says. But he also says most roses can be brought around with proper pruning.
Though roses should be pruned lightly after every flowering, the big chop is saved for when they are dormant. And they’re as dormant now as they’re going to get in Southern California. Never mind that the bushes may still have leaves, or maybe even flowers. This pruning forces roses to take a break--to rest for a month or two.
If you live inland where freezing temperatures are possible, wait until next weekend to begin pruning. Roses leaf out about six weeks after pruning and should be safe from frost by then.
Pruning also is a rejuvenating process. Pruned properly, roses will make strong new growth (the object of pruning) which will result in many more flowers, flowers that are also much larger because the size of a rose blossom is directly related to the size of the stem from which it sprouts. Small, spindly stems make for small flowers; large, strong stems make for large flowers. When properly pruned, roses are remarkably healthier because they have more foliage to manufacture food, plus a strong bush resists most pests and diseases.
There’s a Catch
The catch here is the word properly, for pruning roses is not easy to learn. Complicating matters, according to Southern California rose experts, are the reams of printed matter and even home videos that wrongly tell how to prune roses. These instructions have been written for the colder parts of the country, where roses are traditionally cut back to just a few half-foot stubs.
In Southern California, roses can, and should, be cut back less. Even roses being grown for exhibition or just for cutting are pruned less, and roses being grown for their beauty in the garden, much less.
Basic Principles
Attempting to explain how to lightly prune roses with words, drawings or photographs is very difficult. The problem is that there are so many branches and stems, or canes, as they are more properly called. Attending a demonstration is the best way to learn, but here are the basics:
Begin by eliminating any dead branches or canes, and then look for those that have a heavy coat of bark on them and that only produce small, twiggy growth. These are the culprits that make a rose grow old before its time, and they should be cut right back to the “bud union,” that bulging base of the plant. When cutting out these heavy old canes, use a small or keyhole saw and make the cut flush with the base. Pruning compound may be used to protect the cut, but it isn’t necessary.
On old bushes you may have to leave a few canes that are covered with heavy bark, or there will be nothing left, but leave only three and cut them back to about two or three feet. What you want to do here is encourage new canes to sprout from the base. If you are successful, you can remove the old barky canes next winter, or the winter after; if no new canes sprout, it’s probably time to start over with new plants.
Young Bushes Are Best
Younger bushes will have plenty of young canes that are still green or only lightly encrusted with bark. These will produce the best flowers and the most leaves, thus making the best rose. These younger canes should be preserved but shortened and tidied up.
Hybrid and Floribunda
If you are most interested in cut flowers, hybrid teas (by far the most common roses, that produce the biggest flowers) should have their canes shortened to about three feet. Floribunda roses are naturally shorter (and have smaller flowers) and should be shortened to about two feet. If you want the rose to flower more profusely so it makes a better show in the garden, leave the canes even longer. The rule here is to shorten the plants by a third--a six-foot hybrid tea would end up four-feet tall.
Tidying up means removing all side branches that are thinner than a pencil, although on bushes grown for cut flowers you may want to remove most of the side branches to encourage long, flowering stems.
Cut Close to Bud
Every time you make a cut, make it close to a bud that faces out from the plant, which will encourage growth in that direction and allow light into the center of the plant for healthier growth. Buds are located all along the branches and are either at the base of a leaf cluster or are represented by a slight bulge that makes a ring around the stem.
If as you are pruning you find branches that cross or rub, one should be cut out. Save the younger of the two.
When you finish pruning, pull off all remaining leaves, rake up everything and send it to the dump so pests and diseases are not carried through the winter.
As an added precaution, spray the pruned bushes with a dormant oil spray, a relatively safe spray which smothers pests that may be hiding in the bark. The spray is also available with added lime-sulfur or other fungicides that will control diseases such as rust. Both kinds are available at nurseries. If the oil spray gets on other plants that still have leaves, wash it off.
Finally, sprinkle a little granular fertilizer around the base of the plant and lightly cultivate to settle it into the soil. While you’re at it, pull out all weeds.
