I don't have any ideas about this but tried to search it from the web,..and i'm sure you'll find the best answers!,..

Roses are very forgiving. If the bushes are large and need to be shaped or have dead or damaged canes, prune them. Pruned bushes will produce more and larger blooms. Cutting back thin spindly canes to a thicker place will produce thicker canes.
Contact Consulting Rosarians in Arizona for the best area advice.

Here is a link that might be useful: Arizona CRs

It can somewhat depend on what kind of roses they are. Hybrid Teas, shrubs, OGRs etc. What do you mostly have and are they own root or grafted?

Paul

Mostly HT's, all grafted, a few floribundas and grandifloras. Even the consulting rosarians differ, which is why I was hoping for some comments from experienced forum members.

I can only tell you what I'll do. I prune one year old HT's, grandifloras and floribundas as if they are mature plants. I use the pruners more sparingly on shrubs and climbers in their first 2-3 years. Apart from taking out dead, spindly/weak, damaged or crossing canes/laterals, I don't actually do much to this latter group.

You can ask a dozen rosarians and gardeners and you will probably get a dozen different answers or variants. I am in the habit of not taking anybody's word for it - I tend to experiment. That way, it's more fun and I have learnt more along the way.

It also depends upon the individual plants.

Ask yourself what you hope to accomplish in pruning them.
Decide what growth SHOULD be removed.

The rose does not need pruning to succeed -- so you need to decide what YOU want to do in pruning.

The usual real reason for pruning is to reduce the size of the plant.
Do your yearling plants need to be reduced in size?
If not -- why prune?

Jeri

Yes, as stated above there are no set in stone rules for any area. When I began growing roses, I asked lots of questions, tried most everything, and ended up doing what worked best for me and my garden.
In many cases it was a combination of many things which resulted in my own unique methods.

How old are the plants? I would strictly go by size, and overall desire of shape, other than that if they are young I generally let them build up, and not let them go to hip.I do not let them bloom themselves to death.

Other than that, I wrongly treat most of my plants like China's. So besides ramblers etc, I only remove dead wood etc, because the larger the plant as a rule, the better it does for ME here.

I want them to get big, and have lots of blooms. Since there is no dormant period here, I've been told that dormancy must be induced to keep the plants healthy, i.e. prune & remove all leaves and new growth.

. . . dormancy must be induced to keep the plants healthy, i.e. prune & remove all leaves and new growth.

*** UH-HUH.
Only, that DOESN'T make them dormant.
It just makes them work like crazy to try to replace what you removed.
I'm not telling you you should kick over the traces and not prune (tho, where you are, I would probably not do it in January). I AM telling you to look at each plant as an individual, and consider whether it will benefit from the removal of much of the growth it worked so hard to produce.

Jeri

I believe a yearly pruning will suffice. Doing so promotes new growth and modern roses bloom best on new wood. The harder you prune the more new growth you'll have.
Read Jeri's post again. As she said,
"The rose does not need pruning to succeed -- so you need to decide what YOU want to do in pruning.
The usual real reason for pruning is to reduce the size of the plant.
Do your yearling plants need to be reduced in size?
If not -- why prune?"

In areas of no dormancy cutting back does the same thing.
Otherwise, once you have a strong plant you can let it grow, but pruning will promote more blooms.

Yes we do prune in January in AZ. I live in Lake Havasu City Az. In my experience of pruning since I have lived here (25 years) When I plant a new plant in Jan(bare root) or the spring ( potted plant) the following January I do not hard prune I will just cut off dead and/or any crossing canes and leave it at that. But, next year Jan 2011 you really should hard prune the new plants. For a while I went through a phase of just pruning off the tops and any dead canes and crossing canes and I noticed I was not getting very many blooms. So I decided to give that up and see if hard pruning would give me more blooms and it did, I'm with Karl, pruning promotes more blooms. Our rose's do not go into dormancy here but I truly believe that when I hard prune they do get some rest and I think roses need a rest even if it is a short one. I just finished hard pruning my roses yesterday and they do come back pretty fast. Before I know it I will have huge blooms this spring and next fall. So after all that, I say lightly prune the new ones and next year hard prune. Rose's are very tough they will put up with the few mistakes we make.
Carrie

To me it depends on the rose. Most grafted roses purchased locally in fall were bareroots left over from the previous January. If they weren't pruned at the nursery, they could probably use a trim now.

Since each cane that grows out is a little smaller than the cane it grew out of, the weak, spindley growth will either produce blooms that bend/break the stem or they'll be too small to produce bloom. While some roses are notorious for nodding blooms, it isn't a trait often appreciated in a HT or Gr, lol.

Do remove the oldest leaves as you'll notice many of them are yellowing anyway. If you don't want to prune off the newest growth, don't. You'll deadhead it off after the bloom anyway. The spot where the leaf meets the cane will harbor powdery mildew spores, over-wintering pest eggs and spider mites. Getting air and sunlight to those areas, and maybe a dormant oil spray or fungicide/pesticide, can cut down on your spring garden problems.

While I don't spray during active growing season, I do use a dormant oil spray in winter.

While Consulting Rosarians won't always agree with each other on certain aspects of rose growing, they are correct in saying that January is major pruning month. Exhibitors may wait until February to prune their show roses and others pruned between Christmas and New Years but when talking to novice rosarians, they'll tell you 'January'.

All that said, I've got a CL Iceberg I haven't so much as dead-headed in 2-3 years because I'm still waiting to see if it's EVER going to climb. Right now it's just a short fat bush full of blooms.

Both the Rose Society of Green Valley and the Tucson Rose Society are awesome places to learn rose culture. I'd strongly encourage you to attend the free public pruning demonstrations they hold at their meetings, local nurseries and public rose gardens.

I like a I light hand the first year so the plant can get established. They need that foliage to make food to get settled in. After that as others say it depends on what want. You mention big plants with lots of blooms. Then hard pruning might not be your best choice.

My thoughts are to use a light hand this year, see how quickly and how large each plant grows this year and then next year prune accordingly. If the plant grows like a week then you may want to prune harder. If it grows slowly then prune less.

It's your garden, they are your roses and ultimately you decided what is right and wrong in terms of much or little to prune based on what you want your garden to look like.

Paul

I think I was more hung up on this dormancy thing than anything else, including removing the leaves. Instinct tells me that if you remove leaves from a plant you'll kill it. But I guess things are different in this climate. Thanks to all for your comments!