Rose sucker?

theladygardener

I recently bought my first rose. It's an ena harkness climbing rose and has been in for a couple of months now. There are a couple of shoots which has grown incredibly quickly, but despite reading everything I can find I still can't work out whether they are suckers or not. Can anyone help? They are reddish in colour, but some parts coming off other shoots also are.  They seem to have  lot more thorns, are thicker than most stems and are incredibly fast to grow. The shoot seems to come from the bud union though? 

 

Dovefromabove

Climbing roses put up new long shoots from the base ... every few years you can rejuvenate the plant by removing the old ones which have been replaced by the new.  

Often new shoots have more thorns than older ones ... as they stems get older some of the thorns wear off.  The leaves on the new shoots look similar to the older ones.  I'd be happy that the rose is as it should be.

While those new shoots are young and flexible it would be a good idea to train them sideways  ... that will stimulate the growth of sideshoots which will produce the flowers next year.  There's a video here

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/how-to-train-and-prune-a-climbing-rose/ 

If you let them carry on growing upwards you'll just get a load of flowers at the top where you can't see them, and few lower down.  

theladygardener

Excellent. Thank you so much for your response, it had been very informative ?

Dovefromabove

My pleasure ... let us know how it does next year