Roses -Winter pruning
celcius_kkw
Posts: 751
This is my first year of growing roses and I am just about to start the major winter pruning of my first year roses in pots.
Has anyone started doing this yet? I live in Liverpool so the weather is not the coldest and the temperature has been consistently above 0 for a couple of weeks now.
Most of my roses have not naturally defoliated (all but a couple are David Austin). So far I have pruned a few quite extensively - I have manually defoliated them and trimmed back to about 20cm above ground.
Few questions I have in mind though:
1. I have added little pebbles to some of my pots and I wonder if I should scoop them all up in order to allow me to clear away any dead foliage in the soil more effectively?
1. I have added little pebbles to some of my pots and I wonder if I should scoop them all up in order to allow me to clear away any dead foliage in the soil more effectively?
2. Given it’s been a rather wet winter some of the top layer of soil in my pots have turned green with algae, should I dig that layer up and add some fresh compost instead? If so, should I do it now or wait till it’s a bit warmer in spring?
3. Mulching and fertilising - again should I do it now straight after the major pruning or should I wait till March.
4. Some of my roses are already showing signs of growth with new shoots already popping up.. should I trim down to below the new shoot? Also if there is clearly a bud eye or even new shoot that is inward facing should I manually pick them off to prevent them clogging up the centre of the plant in summer?
5. A lot of rose gardens seem to be able to get all their roses to bloom at the same time and generate a really impressive sea of roses in summer - is there any way of doing this as the amateur gardener? I’m planning to prune all my roses around the same time in the hope of achieving this...
I’ll post some pictures later on, would love to see how you guys prune your roses too. 
David Austin website says one should aim to achieve a rounded shrub with the pruning but does that mean the outer canes should be trimmed shorter than the ones in the middle? Is there some sort of rule or trick to get it look ‘rounded’ ?
David Austin website says one should aim to achieve a rounded shrub with the pruning but does that mean the outer canes should be trimmed shorter than the ones in the middle? Is there some sort of rule or trick to get it look ‘rounded’ ? 0
Posts
Hi Adrian,... nice to 'see' you again.... hope you had a good Christmas up there on the Mersey...
I will answer your questions shortly, with a photo or two...
Prune your roses after you have followed these procedures...
1. You can do this now... scrape away the pebbles... remove the top 2 inches of soil from each pot.. use whatever tool you need, don't worry about damaging roots at the surface.. replace with fresh preferably soil based compost of your choice [JI No. 3 is best, mixed with some Multi Purpose to lighten it - I also add in a small amount of composted manure]… in early March, feed your plants with pelletized fertilizer then reapply your pebble or shingle top mulch..
2. see 1 above...yes remove algae with above procedure..
3. see 1 above...
4. There's no need to worry about inward facing buds... your roses need all the leaves it can manage.. more leaves means more blooms.. however you can prune back to outward facing if you wish..
5. Well, in the garden, most roses will start blooming from mid May, and nearly all of them will have flowers by early June, so it looks coordinated... some exceptions amongst species and old roses but you're not growing those..
...but in pots they are more dependent on you, and we're not doing the Chelsea Flower Show, where they keep their roses in heated greenhouses to flower all at once.. so you might find one is a bit behind the others.... Roses have their own time when they will flower so if you're not bringing them on with heat, then we just have to let them do it in their own time really.. there wouldn't normally be a huge gap. You can only manipulate it with heat..
I'll post a couple of pics of my potted roses, which I've recently pruned back, to show the rounded and open shape...
one has to follow potted rose procedures which means harder pruning..
Here you can see I've tried to keep the canes roughly the same length, about 8 inches, and an open centre.. all these roses have been repotted or as described in no. 1 above.. and I will feed with pelleted fertilizer early March, then top dress with a gravel covering I expect...
best of luck with your roses...
...just remove the largest of the dead foliage and algae... small bits not worth worrying about... but what I do as I have a garden and greenhouse is reuse it elsewhere and reapply fresh... you don't have to spend time picking every last piece out though, that's way too fussy for most people..
...yes you can prune out any canes you don't want... you're in charge of the shape of your rose, so you keep what you want and remove what you feel you don't need.. some roses throw up a lot from the base, you can prune out any surplus but the rose will likely send up more at some point. I have also found that it disappoints the rose a bit so you don't want to keep removing everything...3 canes is good to form a framework..
When you have too many, prune out the oldest, to leave the youngest freshest green wood... but this is some way down the line for you...
my royal William is doing a rather unusual thing of sending up lots of new shoots from the ground.. I think I might have pruned it wrong.. it looks a little ugly now lol
And lastly my climbers.. as you can see the first one Claire Austin has lots of canes.. I’ve trimmed it down to these now but thought I would leave it a bit and see which one grows the best and I’ll prune the rest.
with Claire Austin, all I would do there is trim off bits at the top back to a growing shoot... with Etoile I would keep those canes, they will help form your framework and any that shoot up from the base this year... there isn't enough there to mess about with right now, so just leave them grow and tie in to trellis... these old hybrid tea climbers have weird growth habits, so we have to get used to that..
With your Royal William, lovely red shoots, keep all those, they will help form the rounded plant you're looking for..
You've done the hard work really... thanks for the pictures...it does help to know what's going on, I wish more people would do it when asking questions..
...oh, and what a lovely place to sit out, on a sunny day...