How to recover badly pruned roses?

My friend has some HT roses and her gardener has been pruning them really hard every year. Basically cutting every branch back to about 2 inches in length. From what I understand that seems to be a bit severe and I think that's why quite a lot of the roses look weak and have very little actual main framework. A lot of branches keep dying back. There's a few roses which have just one stem and a few weak branches flopping about at the top.

For the ones that are just one stem, what is the best way to get more branches to come from the bottom? I did think about chopping them right down to a few inches above ground but I am worried that might finally finish them off. Or could some new buds / branches be grafted near the base of the main stem?

Thanks,

Chris

 

This sort of thing scares me.. I bought Rose bushes for the first time this year, probably spent £40 on them and have no idea what to do when it comes to pruning them...

sorry I couldn't help, though!

 

It doesn't sound right to me, not the right period to prune the roses and likely not the right way to do it...
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by:compagniadelgiardinaggio.it

Pruning of roses is normally carried in the month of February, when the plant is dormant and after the period of severe frost.
The reasons for pruning are many.
It is performed to remove the weak branches, sick or dry, and parts of the branches that tend to grow inwards crossing each other.
Pruning keeps the plant young and productive, healthy and give them shape by driving its development.


It is useful to know that, when pruning, it is necessary to:

Use gloves, scissors with blades "beak" clean and disinfected (eg with water and bleach), long handles scissors for larger branches, saw with a curved blade.
Clean the base of the plant in order to better observe the hanging branches and the presence of any radical rootstock suckers.

Throw away any branches damaged, diseased and dry
Eliminate some of the older branches
Shorten the branches of the year (produced in the previous season) to 2-3 buds or according to the strength, taking into account that more powerful branch is to be left long (4-5 buds), and that this rule applies to the branches shorter at the apex of the branches bearing, but not the new ones that start from the bottom or the middle and can establish new branches bearing.
The long and vigorous new shoots should be kept at the height of the plant.
Modify the branches position by tying them in order to cover the gaps of the bush
.At this point it has greatly eased a shrub and is easier to proceed with and complete the work by choosing to prune the branches to form the desired final shape.

Perform a general description of pruning, especially pruning shall be diversified depending on the rose which we operate. It is therefore necessary to know whether or not it is flourishing flourishing, the habit (shrub, vine or sarmentosa), the vigor, the group, or use the form desired.

 

Sorry I wasn't clear, I don't intend to prune them now. The grafting can be done now from what I've read but pruning should be early spring. I know your supposed to cut old stems down from time to time to encourage new growth from the bottom, but when there's only one stem remaining it might be like kicking the last leg from under the table.

thanks,

Chris

 

search youtube for 'roses pruning' ... loads of videos showing you step by step

many garden centres also teach you how to prune roses in february .... contact your local garden centre and find out if and when they will be having a demonstration

some roses need to be pruned twice in the season ...

I'm still learning and will be going to a demonstration as I done it wrong last year

 

If it's any comfort, I once read about some research which compared rosebushes that had been pruned expertly with rosebushes that had just been sheared off any-old-how with a hedge trimmer.

Both sets of roses flowered equally well the following year.

Might be apocryphal, of course.

 

Or maybe not.

http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/roses/20296-pruning-roses.html

http://www.redriverrosesociety.com/pdf/articles/Pruning_Graves.pdf

In which month do i prune myh roses : Grows on You


Roses seem pretty tough. The one thing that finally kills them off is deep shade. If you prune down the stems to about 6" to 12" in late Feb, cutting just above an outward-facing bud I can't see that you will go far wrong and you will have corrected last year's bad pruning. Cutting out weak or crossing stems back to their source is probably not a bad idea,either.

I have never, ever disinfected a pruning tool in my life. It's a rose, not open-heart surgery!

 

someone recently told me that he read of a similar experiment

a large field was planted with rosebushes

one half was pruned with a tractor which set the cutting blades to 2 feet high

the other half was pruned by hand and according to the rules

there was no difference in the amount of flowers, the health of the rosebushes or the quality of flowers later that season

don't know if the story is true, and am just relaying what I was told

 

It is a rose, you will get the same amount of flowers rose for rose, but the hand pruning gives it SHAPE

Jack McHammocklashing

 

I know very little about roses specifically, but I inherited a few when I bought our house.

They were all in a dire state (both front and back gardens had been neglected for some time, and a google maps satellite pic of my house from probably a few years ago shows it was tortured back then).

Following gut instinct, I've been feeding the roses, and cutting off any bit that looks diseased as soon as I spot signs of trouble. I've also been cutting dead flowers off considerably further down than really necessary, sometimes taking a couple of feet of branch off at a time.

The result is the one in the front (some sort of climbing rose) is flowering well, and keeps getting better. The ones in the back have improved noticeably, with some flowering more, and in the case of one wild rose, its flowers finished a while ago but lush green growth just keeps coming.