Some of these rules may have had some validity for some roses (like maybe only HTs) somewhere, but unfortunately they have been promulgated for "roses" for decades, and are obviously NOT applicable (or even good) for most roses in most places.

One hilarious example, and then I will be quiet - if you "remove all twiggy growth" from ANY china rose, the rose would be dead, because 100% of the growth on a china rose is "twiggy"!

Jackie

Whacking back to the nubs likely arose with HPs. Quite a few simply didn't flower unless so attacked. There were a number which didn't flower except as maidens, newly budded plants. Sam McGredy was one well known as that type. If you didn't bud you own new plant every year, you didn't have flowers. "Exhibition pruning" also dictates whacking back to a very small size to force new, straight basals with fewer, but larger, blooms topping them. It's more difficult to win a trophy with a normal sized bloom than it is with something elephantine. Kim

Short answer: No
Long answer: Nooooooo
Detailed reply:

NEVER
WHY?
WHAT!
No
NOOOO

Justmyopionin, YMMV, FWIW, this works for me/myclimate/myplants, etc.

Pruning opinions run the full gamut & this answer isn't a snark at anyone who feels completely differently. In another pruning thread, where most were recommending moderation, someone posted a photo of a bed of Icebergs in glorious bloom, noting that the neighbor hacks the poor things down brutally an a regular basis. Who can figure?
But it seems to me that pruning like that is wounding the plant & more likely to exhaust the rose & allow diseases entrance.

But I don't have a bed of blooms like that!

We try, at the very least, to introduce the concept that not every rose tolerates that sort of pruning -- and that you really CAN kill some (such as Chinas) by doing that to them, repeatedly.

Jeri

I don't follow any of those rules. I like to look at each rose and prune it where it tells me too, not where I've been told to prune. For the most part pruning consists of taking out any dead wood and winter dried tips and maybe a little shaping if it's grown wonky. Otherwise, leave it along. It'll thank you.

Tinaaaaaaa!!!! Bring me the axe!

I am starting to prune my roses now. After having replant a huge number of them in the last year, and having to cut them down to a size that their remaining roots would support, I'm finding myself doing very little pruning indeed. I am biting my tongue as I'm pruning off some buds, but I know most will not come to fruition anyways. I find myself doing most of my cutting on my grandifloras which perhaps I shouldn't have since I seem to want them to be the same size as the HTs. I've been trying to find a large older cane on some to cut to entice new basal breaks, but as I look, I'm thinking that my roses just aren't old enough for me to be there yet. I do multiple little prunes all season, so doesn't leave very much to winter prune.

I'm with you, Seil. Sounds like my kind of "pruning." :-)

I know a nurseryman who has some very interesting ideas about soils, etc. One of the things he says is that plants do better when not surrounded by their own rotting tissues. (fallen leaves, dead twigs or roots that have been rotting in the ground from where another plant of the same kind previously lived) He says that it is best to clean out the dead leaves, twigs, etc and replace with the dead material of another kind of plant. The thinking is that the micro critters that hang around the dead tissue are dangerous to the plants and cause illness and disease.

Now he fully admits that plants have evolved to deal with their own dead and dying tissues but feels that they will be healthier and have a superior performance when they do no have to.

Hi Kitty,
This is the kind of advice we hear a lot but I'm not sure the science bears it out. As the nurseryman admitted, if plants were really made sick by their own falling leaves (which recycle nutrients to the roots), no tree or shrub would survive in the forest. There are so many opinions around, and so little science, which is why I was interested in Gregg Lowery citing evidence that any disease on plant leaves becomes inert once the leaf dies. Does anyone know of any research question done on this by ag departments? If the science supports leaving plant material under the plant, it would save us all a lot of busy work!

Even as a child (a long, long, LONNNNNNG time ago) I understood that some plants needed different pruning tactics. I had a neighbor, a sweet older lady, who had encouraged me to garden with gifts of pass along plants (all wildly thuggish, lol). But she grew hybrid teas. She also had a couple of old roses she had inherited with the place that she'd never seen bloom. When I was about 11 years old I happened to be following her around one February while she was pruning her HT's. When she advanced to one of her old roses, she commented that she wondered why she even bothered, because "the old thing has never had but one or two blooms on it". I meekly (OK, not so meekly) suggested that she not prune it at all that year, just to see how it did. Well, of course, for the first time since she'd lived there, it bloomed its fool head off.

I don't THINK I told her "I told you so". I was much too mannerly for that. LOL.

John

The warm spot in the lower garden was 26 last night....

Thinking there is going to be some non rose pruning to do in the next few days.

So, just where did that guy said the glue goes.... :)

Some plants actually need their own litter beneath them. An example of this is California's native oak trees, which are healthier with oak tree litter as a mulch. I have recently been planting some oak trees on the hillside outside my fence, and am carefully mulching the trees with leaf litter from nearby oaks until they are of a size to make their own.

With roses the story is a bit different. I have observed wild roses growing in their natural state, primarily Rosa californica. The ones I have seen did not grow in concentration of roses, but mixed in with other plants. It's hard to tell what kind of leaf litter they have, if any. I suspect that mostly deer ate their leaves. They also, quite frankly, did not look as vigorous as the roses in our gardens. Remember that a garden is an environment that favors chosen plants while discouraging plants we do not want, which we call weeds.

I have looked at the literature about rose diseases. Powdery mildew requires living plant tissue to survive, so it is fine to leave PM-infected leaves on the ground, ideally covered with fresh mulch or compost. However rust spores do survive once removed from the plant. Blackspot can be spread by fallen leaves, but is more commonly spread by water droplets.

For authoritative information on roses diseases, see the link below from UC Davis. For a more technical discussion you can also consult the book Compendium of Rose Diseases and Pests, second edition, by R. Kenneth Horst and Raymond A. Cloyd, APS Press, 2007.

Here is a link that might be useful: Roses: Diseases and Abiotic Conditions

Many thanks, rosefolly! Good to know where to look for reliable info. I will follow this advice and only remove leaves with rust

Lbuzzel, if you do decide to leave blackspotted leaves on the ground (and I am of two minds about this) it would definitely be a good idea to cover them with a generous mulch. Remember that bit about splashing water. You don't want water to come into contact with some blackspot-infected leaves then splash back up to hit the healthy living plant tissue above.

Rosefolly

Best wishes

This post was edited by jon_in_wessex on Mon, Jan 14, 13 at 13:57

For what it's worth, I do leave blackspot-infested leaves under the bushes but, unless it rains, the leaves dry up in record time. Rust-infested leaves I dispose of in the trash. I believe a mature China, such as my large Mutabilis, can be cut back drastically, but only very rarely. I was forced to do this because it looked sick, and when the leaves were gone I found the gopher hole that was killing it. The rose looks better than ever now after its drastic pruning, but unless I have a very good reason I wouldn't do it again for quite some years. Some Austins bloom very little if I don't prune them, and did splendidly afterwards. I wouldn't dream of pruning roses that are small or young, or pruning teas except to keep them within bounds. If I pruned out the deadwood in my four Le Vesuve planted at the edge of a hill, I'd be a bloody mess afterwards, assuming I didn't fall down the hill (been there on both counts). There are innumerable variables in our individual gardens and in our choice of roses.

Jon, I would have loved to have your input. Your experience at Mottisfont would have yielded some invaluable advice. Granted, conditions there are not the same as everywhere in the United States, but enough areas have some similarities, and even for me in a very different climate it would be extremely interesting to know what you think. Your own garden is incredibly beautiful and I'm sure it didn't arrive at that state by benign neglect.

Ingrid

Thanks, Ingrid. I'm intrigued that your experience is that Austins need pruning to bloom well and will keep that in mind. The Austin website seems to promote summer pruning for size as well. Have others had this experience with Austins?

No. That may be true in Ingrid's conditions.

We, by contrast, in a far cooler and more humid climate, have found consistently that pruned canes canker and die.

Moreover, not all Austins are created equal.

There are VAST differences in disease-resistance, plant habit, and vigor, from one Austin Shrub to another. You really have to look at THIS plant, or THAT plant, rather than trying to make rules for them as a group.

Jeri

I agree in general with your statements about Austins, Jeri, except...

Those closely related to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (within four generations, sometimes more) will be very prone to rust in climates conducive to the issue. They also tend to be some of the most viciously thorny roses around.

Those bred from Aloha (New Dawn) line will tend to run rampant in milder climates and be afflicted with black spot in those which support the black spot strains found in the average SoCal climates. It is possible other strains elsewhere may be an issue, but my experience is with our strains. These also tend to be sharply prickly. Lilian Austin is the one exception to the "rampant rule" stated above with which I am familiar.

As a general rule, in my climate and soil type, the average Austin rose will require significantly more water to flourish, remain healthier and flower as expected than the average HT, floribunda, poly, etc. Most will also tend to want to be significantly larger than the sizes generally stated for the variety. There are exceptions to the size rule. They tend to be his weaker growers, such as Dove, Dame Prudence, and others of that "old HT", wimpy growth. Kim

Yes -- But Kim -- that's just what I was talking about!

There's a world of difference between, say, Aloha, Evelyn, Tamora, Dove, Fair Bianca, and Prospero.

You can't take advice directed at dealing with Evelyn, and apply it to Prospero.

Yes, you CAN look at the individual breeding line -- but otherwise, what they ALL have in common is a need for a LOT of water. :-)

Jeri

Yes ma'am, there is, and we've said pretty much the same thing, except you really can make generalizations about some of his offerings based upon what created them, instead of having to take each one as an individual. And, yes, creating those large, many petalled flowers on ginormous plants does require a lot more water than many other types here. I know I don't provide Graham Thomas and the other "climbing" Austins out front enough water to perform. But the other roses and "companion plants" around them perform just fine. Graham Thomas stopped flowering until it rained. Now, it has flowers. I'm just not willing to spend more than I do for the water I use. Kim

Please notice that I said "some" Austins" because for one I don't have that many, and for another a few are too young to prune at all. Cottage Rose doesn't do well without pruning in my garden and Bishop's Castle will have long canes with drooping flowers if I don't cut it down substantially. Overall I don't feel that most Austins, with the exception so far of Sophy's Rose don't do terribly well in my dry garden, and the only new one I'm getting is Young Lycidas which has been universally praised here. The pictures are so tempting but the reality for me in most cases unfortunately doesn't live up to them.

Ingrid

Yeah, Ingrid -- I hear ya.

But we're living here in drought-land. I think we can't be surprised that roses bred for English Gardens struggle some, here. Heck -- One of my best Austin roses is one Austin's sorta disowned -- Prospero.

I think that plant might do well for you-- but the blooms would not.

Jeri