General help with roses

I have 3 roses in my garden. One is a t-rose, one a climber and one a rambler (thats what the tags said anyway)

With my t-rose I'm not sure how or when to prune it. At the moment it's very straggly and about 5' tall. It gets quite a lot of damage throughout the year from childrens footballs (as does the whole of my front garden) being kicked into the garden. It has very dark red flowers that are nicely scented.

My climber and rambler are pink and once again I'm not sure about how to care for them properly - basically I leave them to it, although the football damage has now detatched one from my wall so I'll have to tie it up again. They're reasonably bushy, produce lots and lots of flowers.

I really have no idea about roses so I don't know when to prune them or how tall I should be leaving the stems after pruning. Any help would be very appreciated.

 

I'm assuming "t-rose" = hybrid tea, do you know the name of it?

5' tall is pretty big! I cut mine down to around 1/3rd to 1/2 in late Autumn to stop them getting rocked about by the wind etc. The frost etc. will then kill some of the ends of the stems.

Early in the year I then prune hard - I look for the lowest "eye" that is pointing outwards on each stem, and cut just above that - i.e. to encourage growth from that eye.

If that leaves any inward-facing eyes that will "crowd" the centre of the bush I just rub them out with the secateur blade.

I also cut out any old wood that isn't doing much, or anything crowding the centre of the bush, or anything I don't want or like the look of!

 

P.S. When I dead-head the bush (i.e. remove flowers that have finished) I cut back to a decent bud where a new shoot can form with the next "crop" of flowers. The buds are at the base of each leaf, so basically I am cutting back to just above a leaf; don't cut much off, but you may choose an outward-facing leaf, in preference to an inward-facing one higher up the stem. I'm really only cutting to just below the flower for this "summer pruning", if you cut hard back the pant will have to work much harder to make fresh growth.

 

Hi Katherna,

It can sound a bit confusing when you read advice rather than see it so

www.gardenersworld.com/.../pruning-training/



should help

 

Lollipop: somethign chopped off the middle part of your link, looks like this one:

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/category/pruning-training/

which leads to:

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/rose-bush-prune/

 

Thanks Kristen,

Just a quick funny I noticed on the list it says


you will need


-secauteurs
-rose bush

.......................you don`t say!


you gotta love the bbc for stating the obvious! LOL LOL LOL

 

ps-can`t you tell the rain has kept me out of the garden today!

 

It's a good thing I have both

 

I know-you`d have made a right old mess if one was missing LOL

 

You could ask them to add "virtual rose bush" to the list

 

heehee, is that to go with the 'virtual secauteurs' ?

 

:DLOL

 

If I had a virtual garden I could grow everything and it'd look nice, heehee.

Thanks for the hints and tips, I'll be takling some of the jobs to be done this weekend (bit of a fair weather gardener at the moment, mainly because I've not got a clue what I should be doing :eek: ) deadheading the roses first I suppose. It's a start, I'd really like to enjoy my garden but just can't seem to get into the 'zone' with it. I just seem to be fighting it, lol.

 

Hi again Katherna,

Just do one job at a time, don`t push yourself and don`t judge yourself harshly at all and the enjoyment will start to seep in-I promise.


Ground force type jobs just don`t exist-and who wants blue fence panels anyway?

(Apologies in advance for those that do)

 

Personally i dead head hard, with vigorus roses, ill often cut the up to 8" off obviusly working to an aoutward bud.

Look at dead heading as a way of keeping the shape and tidieness of the bush and not merly cutting off flowerheads.

The more you dead head and the harder you do it (within reason) the more flowers youll get.