8 Great tips for more rose blooms
There are many different varieties of roses, including single roses, spray roses and shrub roses. While some rose bushes produce one blossom per branch, others produce several roses per branch. Luckily, all are very receptive to being trimmed for more blooms. That’s what we call deadheading.
Each type has its own peculiarities when you are summer deadheading, and if you trim effectively each week, they will respond with a vigorous rush of new buds leading to larger blooms.
It really is quite amazing to watch, and an easy way to extend their blooming season by a month.
Here are some detailed deadheading tips with up-close images from my Pixel phone camera that should help you keep your bushes more productive week-to-week.
Several of these tips have come from talented perennial rose-show winners who I’ve met as they exhibit and arrange all over the U.S. using their own garden roses. Most, though, come from my own time in many community gardens.
Why the details?
Science. Plant science has shown us over the last 50 years that quality pruning will affect how many blooms you get each month, and how large the blooms will be. Get to know your roses. Then get to know a show exhibitor, they’ll explain the how and the why of it all.
If left alone for too long, roses will continue on their seasonal cycle toward making seeds inside their rose hips, which signals to the bush that it’s time to STOP budding.
Our job as rosarians is to push the plant into MORE budding by trimming off the faded & spent blooms to encourage new growth. It’s that simple . . .
Redirecting our plant’s energy each week from hip-making or leaf-making to bloom-making is the target of our deadheading, but many busy rose gardeners haven’t been shown a detailed how or why to accomplish this. Here’s my take on it . . .
Deadheading is NOT pruning. OK, it’s trimming – but we’re only working on the top 1/3 of the bush to increase bloom production until the Fall.
Summer deadheading is much different work than Spring pruning, where you’re pruning the entire bush for health & shape in late February. Fall pruning around Halloween is the removal of tall canes and blooms, to avoid wind & frost damage as the blustery colder weather moves in.
1. What to look for
Here are some of the many spots where removing a stem/bloom will re-focus the plant energy to more & bigger blooms.
A. The middle ‘dead’ head
B. Crowding of the buds
C. Lost bloom color
D. Losing petals
E. New growth below
F. Bare spindly stems
G. Large spent sprays
H. Early rose hips
2. Find the middle bloom that matures 1st
Notice in these images how the middle blooms are more mature, while the surrounding buds are coming on a little later. If you don’t prune anything else, start with these older deadheads. The plant energy will find the remaining buds and your bush will look great for the next week. It will also encourage new leaf production that may yet again start more new buds.
3. Find the 5-leaf stem if possible
When you do have to prune, find a 5-leaf stem below the faded bloom if it’s not too far down the cane. I prefer to skip one & cut the 2nd down.
If you can’t get to a 5-leafer, use a 3-leaf stem instead. If you don’t see either, cut above a knob on the cane & cross your fingers. The next image below shows that it does work . . .
Statistics: A 5-leaf stem will yield a bud about 95% of the time, where a 3-leaf one drops to about 83%. The knob on the cane success is only about 50%. That’s the logic behind Grandma’s “cut to a 5-leaf stem” method.
4. Cut at an angle
Here’s another tried & true method that has logic behind it. Prune at an 30 degree angle about 3/8″ above your cane/stem joint to shed water & speed up the crust-over of the cut.
HOWEVER, the angle isn’t critical, nor is the 3/8″. Just practice creating an angle. And practice getting about 3/8″ above with your cuts. If your angle is a little off, “oh well” – and if you get a 1″ cut like in this image, “oh well” again. Only your success rate will suffer a little – the bush probably won’t suffer at all . . .
This tip is a bit more important during the Spring pruning of larger canes nearer the soil.
5. Pruning above emerging new growth
If you find new growth emerging from a cane, then do the 3/8″ angle trim above it. After +/-12 days you should see a new leaf as a result.
In this image from a community garden, you can see my prune from the 3 weeks ago that has hardened over (white tip) and the maroon leaves that have exploded from the cane/stem joint, leading quickly to a new bud.
Note also that there is typical curling skin at the maroon stem joint where it pushed out from the green cane as it forms. This is a good example of its bold & dynamic summer growth.
Here again, the 3 week old trim spot (white tip) has accelerated the new maroon growth, pushing the bush to create another bud.
Also, notice how the healthy tight bud is erect & reaching for the sunlight. That’s another payoff for deadheading each week: very light-absorbent leaves & tight buds that repel most insects.
6. Common mistakes
Here’s a gallery of mistakes that you can often see if you visit community gardens maintained by volunteers. Think of the missed blooms by not trimming to the next 5 leaf stem, and overall bush development by not thinning out the puny stems. Most are just a function of losing concentration & going through the numerous bushes too quickly. Luckily, the time crunch is less of a factor in our home gardens.
7. Understanding sprays
TechTalk: Rose bushes of all types produce main stems, or peduncles. On a rosebush like a hybrid tea that produces a single flower (‘Queen Elizabeth’), this peduncle grows into one strong rosebud. The peduncles on spray roses (floribundas) make multiple pedicels or smaller stems en masse. Each pedicel then produces a single blossom.
A glossary of rose terms to better understand this, is here.
Pet peeve #1: Continuous pruning of a spray on a floribunda or shrub above the main joint at the cane. This will often encourage leaf & stem production, rather than more blooms when a whole new spray develops.
When you do this, the length of time to get your new blooms is a bit longer, but the effect is dramatic. It also helps keep the bush to a manageable height overall by eliminating leggy smaller canes and aiming the plant energy toward the beefier ones. You won’t really hurt the plant . . .
But wait – what about all the small deadheads among the flowering ones? Shouldn’t I just trim those instead of wiping out the whole spray?
YES, keep that spray blooming & budding as long as it can. BUT, once it’s fully spent, don’t keep trimming the top, expecting new growth. In the gallery below, notice how the emerging red sprays stand above the overall lower bush. That’s its “growth habit” at work, and typical of floribundas.
When the bush needs to sprout for reproduction – it really sprouts upward like this maroon ‘new growth emerging spray’ image below.
8. Shrub roses require extra time
The dense & intense growth of shrub roses, including Knock-Out roses, requires extra detailed work for a continuous bloom. In this gallery of images you can see how the new growth emerges at almost every leaf joint.
We need to pay a lot of attention to finding the new growth & trimming above it, because they only bloom from new this growth. Yes, they’re needy, but the results can be spectacular. Getting rid of the mixed deadheads among the buds & blooms is tedious – but effective.
Don’t stress over deadheading – enjoy this peaceful time in the garden
I hope these 8 great tips for more blooms on your roses help you in your home garden. They’re easy to incorporate into your weekly garden work, too. Unless you muck up your plants by cutting big canes, it’s difficult to deadhead the bushes too much.
Once your roses start blooming, just take a stroll through your garden once a week with your needle-nose shears, and snip off any blooms that have faded away as I’ve outlined above. It won’t take much time, and it can make a big difference in how long your blooms last, how many flowers your rose bushes produce – and how much more you’ll enjoy your rose garden. You’ve worked hard, now nurture your babies & enjoy the results.
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