How to Prune Roses Early

When is the best time to prune roses? It's really not that difficult, but you need to know the type of rose you have since they are treated differently.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Sharp clippers
• A good eye
• Green recycle can for garden waste

1. Identify the type of Rose you have in the garden. The best time to do pruning is late winter or early spring. The exception is early blooming roses. Look at bush and remove any branches that are damaged by winter winds and storms. Look for old branches and ones that are growing towards each other and could eventually cross. These will need some pruning.

2. When pruning, take out any stems that are too close or ones that have grown too long. Try cutting back to the leaf node. For climbing roses, they may not need to be pruned every year. Look for and remove the oldest limbs of the bush to keep healthy. For Standard Roses, prune more severely to ensure a full year of new growth.

3. If in doubt, go ahead and prune back hard in the Spring. Worst case scenario is that you don't have flowers on the plant that year. Deciding what to cut can be an art form: Make cuts at 45 degree angle and 1/4 inch above an outward facing bud. New growth will be upward and outward, creating a pretty shape and a healthy rose bush too!

Tips & Warnings

• Pruning helps the plant provide NEW growth to keep it healthy and give it air and light for the middle of the bush.
• The more pruning you do, the better you will become. Practice DOES make perfect.
• Visit a public Rose Garden to see how the experts do it!
• Best time to prune is when all the chances of frost and freeze are gone. Late Spring.
• Even if you prune badly, so long as you leave some growth, you won't kill the rose. It may not look wonderful, but it should produce some flowers for you. Learn as you go and try again next year!
• Don't forget to prune, so roses don't get overgrown, hard to deal with, and get unattractive.

[Susanh]

on 3/26/2009 Roses are amazingly resilient! Good tips on how to prune them.

[circusmama]

on 3/16/2009 We've had to cut our roses back several times due to disease, and they do come back very strongly. Great tips!