Rose bush pruning

Hi,

I am posting a photo of a rose bush here that I have recently cut right back.

Prior to this photo the bush was producing lots of white flowers/hips and then several peach coloured flowers as well but not too many.

I am told that the white flowers were rootstock. So my rose was in danger of being destroyed by this.

Can I ask what I should do with this root system here? And in general with this plant? Should I cut some more off? Shall I just leave it now?

Many thanks in advance

 

Hi @jumanji

There appear to be a couple of dry brown stems. Definitely cut those ones off as they are no good.

Regarding the rootstock growth, they would be coming from under the graft. So you need to remove some of the soil, make sure that is indeed the case, and pull them out.

 

Thanks for the info.

To you does it look like the main two stems are the legitimate rose? They are very thick compared to the others?

Also should I be cutting those down even further still?

 

No problem @jumanji

Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to tell whether they are suckers from the thickness of the stems. Some people say that if a stem has 7 leaves it's likely a sucker, but this has mostly been debunked, as it doesn't apply to all roses. Were the flowers different in shape as well, besides the colour difference? And did the leaves differ between branches?

I would certainly hope that the big strong canes are the proper rose you paid for! To know for sure though, you really need to remove some soil and find out whether they are coming from under the graft.

I definitely wouldn't reduce the height of the small stems more. Regarding the two large ones, I can't tell for sure from the picture.

 

Only going by appearance, but the two big stems appear to be the most vigorous so its possible they are suckers from the root system, but not possible to say from the picture.
If so they have been allowed to grow far too big and basically ruined the variety.

Only you know what parts the different flowers were growing on, the rootstock flowers were probably single where as the variety would most likely, but not always, have larger fuller double type flowers.

 

Im attaching a picture of the rose bush from later last year around summer time.

And yes the flowers were completely different... they were white and shaped differently/a lot smaller. They actually didnt look too bad but the rose flowers are much more desirable to have!

 

Its a bit difficult to draw any conclusions from the picture, its not showing much detail.

 

Well where the rose hips are where the white flowers would be. Then right above all of this there would be some longer branches where the actual roses would bloom. You can see at the very top is where I pruned them.

So I will take a look a bit closer at the root system and see any can be pulled from under the soil. Then I guess I will just leave it and see how it develops over spring and try to determine which branch is which? Does that sound like the right approach?

 

Oh I see now they are hips, I was wondering as I thought you said the flowers were white.

All I can say is the most vigorous part will very likely be from the rootstock, the leaves will be different as well, but it looks like the rootstock has pretty much taken over the whole plant to me.

 

In which case ... what to do? I quite like the rootstock flowers and we do still have some rose flowers too.

 

It looks very old to me and if those 2 thick stems are producing small white flowers instead of the original flowers I think it has been taken over by the wild rose rootstock.

I would dig it up, change the earth it is planted in, to prevent rose sickness, and plant a new rose. However, first you need to remove a lot of the shrub it is growing out of. That shrub is smothering the bottom part of the rose.