Advice on rejuvenating a climbing rose on obelisk
My Warm Welcome rose was not very well trained due to my inexperience, it has far too many straight stems shooting up the middle, I didn’t wind it around the outside of the obelisk as much as I should have. Despite this, in its first year it did flower amazingly but less so this year. Now it does really need some serious attention. There is a lot of dead wood that I plan to prune off, but some of the remaining green stems are a bit stiff and I probably need to chop those back by two thirds in order to tease them out without breaking them on the cross-bars, so I can then tie them to the outside more horizontally.
Is now now a good time to do this retraining or should I just cut out the dead wood and leave it til spring to do anything more severe? Would I be better chopping the lot right back to the ground and starting again?
Is now now a good time to do this retraining or should I just cut out the dead wood and leave it til spring to do anything more severe? Would I be better chopping the lot right back to the ground and starting again?
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
0
Posts
You could take one in three stems down to just above ground level in early Spring to encourage fresh growth lower down the plant.
So If I prune and thin as you say, @yorkshirerose, the remaining good green stems I keep would be more pliable to tease out the frame and retrain in spring (sap rising?), then now? I was thinking the opposite, that they will be older by then and thus less bendy, but seems I have it the wrong way round, so thanks for that!