A successful spring begins with winter pruning
Are you confused about ‘rose pruning’? We’ll try to clarify it here . .
What’s the difference between pruning, deadheading, & trimming?
What’s a cane, or a stalk, or a shoot, or a bloom, or a stem?
Our focus here is on how to prepare your roses for success with winter pruning rather than trimming spent blooms in summer with deadheading – but it never hurts to clarify our subjects & reduce any confusion.
If you’re looking for a more thorough post about deadheading, check that out here.
Follow along as we explain these universal terms with a glossary – then enjoy a great video from our very experienced friend, Baldo Villegas, about typical winter pruning.
A Short Glossary – the long glossary post is here.
Pruning: This describes an entire project that occurs in the late Winter & is designed to set up your bushes for the entire season by hard pruning the entire bush. Focus is on the major canes, especially where they show disease or physical damage from rubbing other canes or even breakage from strong wind.
Deadheading: This is a long-term project where you trim back the spent blooms each week during the entire blooming season – generally between May & October. It encourages more & larger blooms for a longer season – and allows you to shape the bush as it grows.
Trimming: A general gardening term for when we are cutting off a little bit of material from anywhere in the bush.
Canes: These are the large stems growing in the core of the rose bush. Usually, we point to the crown at the base of the bush to show canes, but canes also grow throughout the bush like limbs in a tree.
Stalks: A florist marketing term for a single bloom rose on a stem. 30 stalks = 30 roses for a bouquet with stems & leaves. For you & me, these are what we put in a vase or arrangement.
Stems: The slender supporting branch that connects to a single bloom or creates a spray of blooms.
Shoots: The emerging stem, leaves, & rose bud from a mature cane.
Blooms: These are your roses. And the payoff for all your work. Enjoy!
Some up-close pruning details
Here’s what you’re looking for: dead, damaged, diseased, or even necrotic canes that will waste the energy of the bush now & harm it later on. Each of these will limit the movement of the nutrients as they start to flow up from the rootball to stimulate new growth. Combined, they’re real trouble.
Note the suggested cut locations marked in red. They are intentionally distant from the damage because some more damage will be out of sight below the surface of the cane – and we’re looking to make a clean cut across healthy material to fully eliminate the problem area – and also encourage strong new growth from the remaining cane.
Cane cutting up close
There is a bit of science we should follow as we are cutting back any canes. If you see buds, then this is the preferred method for a cut. The angle helps to speed up the hardening-over of the cut & the 1/4″ gap allows the sub-dermal growth of this new bud to fully develop from the cane.
Our Archive
If you are a member of TRS, then you will find many detailed answers about the reasoning & techniques of pruning & deadheading in our monthly newsletter. These brief articles in a Q & A format are written by one of our resident Master Rosarians with many years of hands-on experience and many years of teaching ARS level classes. The Queen’s Herald newsletter archive (arranged by year) is online here with its own built-in PDF reader.
