TIME to prune your roses with a hedge shear?
This unbelievable act of gratuitous garden horror was shown to me last year during a visit to a friend's garden during rose pruning week.
I have seen hedge shears used for many things from pruning hedges to pruning mass-planted perennials, which worked amazingly well.
But to prune the queen of flowers with a hedge shear was something that left me with a loss for words. In all fairness, my friend's shear technique did work for some roses like fine branched climbers and groundcover roses, but for other roses, not so much.
And let's just say it's not for me.
To his credit, my friend pruned two big climbers and a group of 30 or so low growing groundcover roses in about 30 to 40 minutes, a task that would have taken roughly three or four hours by hand. Roses in residential gardens require a little more time, effort and detailed attention to successfully prune, so please use a pair of pruners.
It's timely this week to talk about roses because St. Patrick's Day signals the start of rose pruning season depending on where you live. Above the Upper Levels Highway, you wait until after March 17. Depending on the weather it could be a week later. Below the Upper Levels you start pruning onward from March 17 or earlier if the winter is mild.
Any Jedi gardener worth his or her salt would use a hand pruner, lopper and saw, all cleaned and sharpened for pruning roses.
Perhaps more important than where to cut the stem is the knowledge of how much to cut back the rose. Most garden variety roses can be cut down by two thirds to three-quarters of the plant's height including climbers, shrubs and groundcover roses. Cutting back roses induces bushiness from the heading cuts made to the stems.
By pruning at the end of winter dormancy (March) we take advantage of dormant invigoration and avoid much winter damage to the fresh cut stem.
The act of choosing the individual cuts depends on the position of the bud on the stem, the direction the bud faces and the relative position of the buds in relation to each other.
As a general rule, all stems should be cut back to outward facing buds, a quarter-inch above the bud, with a cut that is square to the line of the stem, and cuts made to leave all stems at a relatively uniform height (plus or minus an inch or so) for presentation and production of a well-branched and bushy rose.
I cannot recommend strongly enough not to use dormant oil, lime sulphur, Bordeaux mix or other toxic pesticides or fungicides this early in the spring only to kill emergent beneficial insects and unseen pests or diseases.
If you have pest or disease problems on your roses, do some homework before spray bombing our air, water and soil. And always consider removal and replacement of under-performing roses before spending more money on pesticides, especially with the market providing plenty of selection in hardy, resistant and floriferous roses.
There is also no logical reason to apply wax or other sealants on the end of the rose stems or the crown. Sealants are primarily used for shipping, not for garden growing.
One of the most neglected rose maintenance tasks is mulching. Mulch improves the presentation, eliminates almost all weeding, enhances soil fertility in a sustainable manner, and the application of an organic mulch (like animal manure) will provide a microbial and antibiotic fertility boost for soil and roses. I recommend lightly (and I mean lightly) raking the soil surface clean of most debris under the roses before applying new mulch.
Raking off all signs of organic matter, topsoil and soil life during the soil surface cleaning phase is draconian, unnecessary and forbidden. If your roses need a boost, mulch with compost or animal manure. If your roses are healthy and the soil is good then mulch with bark mulch, wood chips or shredded leaves or any other organic mulch that suits your taste. But please, no landscape fabric or plastic should be permitted to touch the soil of a rose bed in the garden, it's just not necessary or civilized.
I am always asked which roses I grow in my garden. I only have two.
One is Rosa Golden Wings because it is light, fluffy and carefree. The other rose is a groundcover called Rosa Nozomi because it has shiny, dark green leaves, a mild fragrance and pale-pink flowers.
Both of my roses are placed where they get at least six hours of sunlight a day, in good deep soil with good air drainage to limit disease infestation. These are words to live by when it comes to growing roses.
Todd Major is a journeyman horticulturist, garden designer, writer, consultant and organic advocate. For advice contact him at [email protected].
