I read this last night and then over again this morning. Let me see if I got it right.....

With this method we are trying to preserve most of the size and remove only weak or spent old wood. On the Vintage pruning demo pictures they show thinning and opening up the bushes, but the newsletter articles says that sunlight to the interior of the plant causes it to want to grow shoots to fill up the shrub. How much do you want to remove from the inside with the new method? I usually remove canes that are only putting out weakly growth and try to leave the newer stronger stuff alone.

One of my books from England says to shorten the canes of the shrubs back by 1/3 to encourage branching. I have seen this to be effective on my bourbons. The ones I didn't shorten had fewer longer canes. I don't have the space to bend them down or peg them. I was shortening them by 1/3 and taking out the 4-5 year old wood from lower down and the thinnest wood that seemd weaker. The ones I left alone and did not shorten had less branching and thus fewer roses. I get basically one main crop of flowers from my bourbons in the spring and so this is working for me.

I am going to try and leave my tall Austin/English roses alone this year and see what happens. Most of the big ones are currently at 5' or more. I find that if I leave the hips on these, they will not rebloom well.

I am trying to follow the watering advice. This was the same advice I heard from someone before from UC Riverside. What was new was leaving the rose leaves under the plants. I usually rake them up and put down mulch. This year, I will let them be and put the mulch over the top. That will save me from the yearly scratching I get reaching into the large shrubs to get the leaves out.

The big question remaining for me is- what helps the rose produce strong new canes every year? This is what I really want and I thought that prunning encouraged it. Does the rose need the old wood to draw from and make the new canes? I keep the roses well watered. I probably water too much, but they grow very fast so I believe they are happy.

What do all of you think ?

Thanks for letting us all know. Vintage is a rose supplier worth supporting too.

The big question remaining for me is- what helps the rose produce strong new canes every year?

*** IMHO, the answer is: "IT DEPENDS."
In my environment, very few roses like to have big major canes shortened.
If I do that, the cane stops producing much of anything, and eventually dies back.
After years of experimentation, we no longer shorten them.
When a cane is senile, we remove the whole cane.

Most modern roses here benefit from regular deadheading.
Teas and Chinas don't much care.

Teas and Chinas do NOT need the centers opened and the twiggy growth removed.
In fact, that is detrimental to them.

They don't NEED pruning until they're really mature.
Then, you are best-served by preserving large canes until they are completely useless, then removing them.

Jeri

Thanks, Jeri - I think some of us (me included) are feeling a little confused in regard to the Vintage newsletter about new thinking on pruning. I downloaded it, read it, and liked it. But since I am currently in the middle of trying to grasp the whole Pruning thing, it has left me actually a little more at sea than I was. I won't be pruning my roses for another year or two, since they are all new this year, and I have made a few mistakes already (now I have finally gotten it through my head to LEAVE THEM ALONE). Nonetheless, I am trying to learn as much about pruning old roses as I can, because I am volunteering to help at the Sacramento Cemetery Rose Garden, and I don't want to do any damage (I ask for advice before I touch anything, and Anita and the others are very good about showing and explaining, but I need to learn more, for sure). I've clipped this post of yours, as it's very helpful and good for me to know - among my babies are a couple of teas. I also have a few early HTs and a polyantha. Would you say the early HTs should be handled like a modern rose, or more like a tea? They are Mlle. Jeanne Phillipe, Betty, and Angels Mateu. Thanks.
Laura

Laura, in MY conditions, the early HTs (at least on their own roots as I have them) are pretty twiggy. I'd say that they're more like Teas in their habit than any really modern HTs I've seen.

So my approach to them has evolved to a case of bend and snap deadheading, and "Pruning" that's pretty much a case of leaving things alone unless they're dead.

Mind -- I have no studies or other evidence to support that. It's just what's working best for ME.
I'd toss that question by the Cemetery folks, too, since I know they have a few early HTs there. But my operating theory is that twiggy, immature plants will not benefit from a lot of pruning.

I might add something Jim Delahanty said on Sunday at the Stagecoach Inn pruning demo down here:
That we prune, NOT for the good of the rose (which would be happy to be left alone) but for our own separate purposes.
Those purposes would be things like having planted roses much to close together, or because we think it would be more attractive if shorter.

Jeri

Thanks, Jeri -
That's exactly what I was wondering about: if, since those early HTs seem so Tea-like, they would prefer to be handled like Teas. So that's good to know. All of my roses came from Vintage and are own-root. So I'm going to not allow myself to go anywhere near them with sharp instruments... although it's too late for a couple of earlier, over-zealous mistakes. Still, everyone keeps saying how resilient roses are.
Thanks again, Laura

Actually, Jeri, the OGR pruning demo was on Saturday. But you are absolutely correct that I said it and meant it. If you parse out the reasons why people prune, it usually means for purposes unrelated to the teleology of the rose bush and mostly for human desires and errata. JimD

I would venture to guess most people prune because they were told to (ditto with cleaning every bit of dead or dying matter from their gardens).

I find that since I branched off into growing food (fruit trees and vegetables) I've learned SO much more about roses than when I only grew roses. The "teachers" I've benefited most from (apart from my fruit trees and edible crops) include Tony Kienitz of Vegetare (an edible landscape company), author of "The Year I Ate My Yard" who also teaches/speaks on occasion, Steve Solomon's "Gardening When It Counts" and John Warner, a former ag teacher in Orange County who market gardens organically and supports several people on about 1.5 acres (link to his website below). There's also the Dervaes family in Pasadena (http://www.pathtofreedom.com/) also making a living market gardening on at most 1/4 acre but while they garden intensively Solomon explains in his book the benefits of spacing plants out giving them alot of room, especially in dry climates, to establish deep, wide root systems that survive "dry farming" (or water rationing, economic crises, etc.). Slow growth has advantages over fast so pushing plants with fertilizers and excess water can lead to their early deaths or at least disease. John Warner is my latest find, his message of "less is more" echos what is written in the Vintage newsletter. Sometimes if we "hear" the same message in different words or from a different angle we "get it" - our time is better spent bringing things into the garden to mulch with (coffee grounds from Starbucks, neighbors lawn clippings or bags of leaves, horse manure from a local stable) than hauling things out to make everything look like Disneyland (I've never seen a wood or forest "tidy"). It pretty much comes down to being good stewards of the soil, not so much the plants, and taking a systems approach.

Here is a link that might be useful: John Warner's website

Greenwitch -- I have friends who are in rare fruit and sustainable gardening.
It's fascinating to see how the things they "know" mesh with these new thoughts
on growing roses.

Jeri

Greenwitch, I agree too with almost everything you've said. My husband and I are into permaculture, fruit tree growing and organic gardening in addition to roses and these other disciplines have really influenced how we understand and treat our roses. But I'm not sure about Solomon's idea of spacing plants widely in dry areas. In a permaculture food forest (which is what we have in our not-very-big backyard), overstory trees, understory trees, shrubs, ground cover etc are planted intensively and close together in "guilds," in imitation of a natural forest. Rather than stress the plants for lack of water, the whole ecosystem seems to preserve moisture. I'm not sure why, but maybe there's some kind of cooperation going on, I guess.