Rosebush Guru

stuart and Cody

Morning everyone, hope your all enjoying this weather? and like me are pottering about in the garden.  Anyway i have a question about roses in general, common advice is to cut them back in march time but they are shooting and growing quite well now,  is there a specific reason we cut them back in the March and not let them grow now.? any advice is much appreciated.

fidgetbones

You can see where the lowest buds are  in March. However, with an early start to the season, you could prune now.  The danger is that we get a severe freeze up next month which knocks back all the tender new growth.

stuart and Cody

thanks Fidget, thing is i planted some climbing roses last year at the end of the season they didn't grow a great deal but they have a bit over winter and now they are growing up my fence, they are stringy which i expect climbers should, they have lots of new modes of growth so i'm u sure where to cut them back even if i should.

Perki

Is it a climbling rose @stuart and Cody ? you can cut the dead branch off the base ( light brown stem ) and remove the old leaves from last year and bin them don't compost them.

stuart and Cody

hi Perki yep it's a climber, come march i don't really want to cut the green stems back too far if at all, it seems there is new growth coming all the way up them so i presume they will stem off new branches?

Borderline

Your rose is just forming and still very young. If you can, try to pull the thin branches from behind the trellis now and train them through the front of the trellis instead, they will mature and thicken up in time, and may become trapped behind the trellis.

At this stage, I don't think you need to prune or cut much. Allow it to grow and just train it throughout the year.

punkdoc

You need to try and train some branches horizontally, then those stems will produce side shoots, which will bear the flowers. Otherwise you end up just having flowers at the top of the branches.

Dovefromabove

https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/how-to-prune-a-climbing-rose/

Dont cut the main stems, you need them or you’ll get no blooms ... fan them out and train towards the horizontal to stimulate the growth of side shoots which will produce the flowers 

stuart and Cody

thanks for the advice guys, when you say about training it vertically up the trellis do you mean with ties of sorts? 

Dovefromabove

Yes ... soft twine will do ... but more horizontally NOT VERTICAL  so it looks sort of fan shaped - if you scroll down on this site you’ll see diagrams
https://www.classicroses.co.uk/ideas-and-advice/training-roses.html