I prune too early every year. I've already started because I had roses to transplant and needed room to move around the plants.

My schedule is hectic. Jobs get done when there is time, not when the calendar says today is the day. Pruning is done on weekends from late February into April. I have never seen any adverse effects.

How about pruning after you return? I've been pruning later than sooner.

Plants having leaf buds should not be the driver to prune. I've got canes that have leafed out already. I'm not even thinking of pruning for a minimum of another 4 - 5 weeks.

You run the risk of running into something like last year's "Easter freeze" which folks are still talking about. You might lose some additional canes, or even plants, you might not. Or, the weather might be nice.

Diane - does pruning stimulate new growth?
-t

In this part of the world, the roses are going to grow whether we prune or not. They've had enough days with temps in the 50's and 60's. They've had N added by spring thunderstorms. Worm action through winter (and especially aided by winter rains) has made the soil near the roots better. The roses want to grow and they don't want to wait.
And if we prune now, the cuts will harden before the critters that bore into them and kill rose canes become active. New growth will be directed where we want it to go.
If you prune now, you can go in and take off winter damaged and dead canes so that growth won't be wasted on canes that will not live past July.
Now the Rose Sages will tell you to wait. (Some of those sages prune and care for rose gardens for a living and they can't possibly prune all their gardens at the optimum week, so doing it later works well for them.)
By waiting, you'll knock off a lot of new growth when you prune, the knockoff is inevitable. You'll loose a lot of new growth. You'll have maybe four weeks of growth before the early May heat wave comes (temps in the upper 80's and low 90's).
My take is that we need to make new canes in the spring. These are the canes that will make the rose better through the years.
Our dry summers often don't add canes to the roses and fall canes often don't live through the following winter.
Just my $0.02

I tend to think that, as roses get older, precise pruning becomes less important. Assuming they are healthy. They have a large root mass and can recover from a late freeze or bungled technique.

This is not meant to imply that no timing or technique is necessary. I just think that many of us stress about this more than we have to.

Terryjean asked, "Does pruning stimulate new growth?"

At least under my conditions, it does. A few years ago, on April 15th, I pruned one of two adjacent plants of Radio Times back to healthy wood - meaning to within 6 inches of the ground. A week later, the just-emerging buds on the pruned plant had grown two-three inches long, the buds on the unpruned plant had not grown at all.

Thanks, Mike. So that is where the advice of not pruning too early comes from. Always wondered.
-t

Thanks Mike.

I'm with Ann, and I totally agree with Harry. Way too much stress around pruning.

Last year I pruned in December. Nothing bad happened.
This year I pruned in January - But I only pruned half of my roses - There is 0 difference in the growth when I look at the roses that I pruned vs the roses that I didn't. All of the roses have baby growth, some of the ones that I didn't prune have more growth. I'll say that the extra growth on some of the ones I didn't prune is probably just chance.
Of course my zone is different than other peoples. Maybe there is a difference. I read that David Austin thinks pruning early is best, but he is in a totally different climate.
Carrie

I totally agree, too much stress about pruning.
Thank you all for your words and experience.

Carla

When I see the new buds I know it is time to prune. Since it takes me several weeks to prune all of the roses, if I didn't start at that time, I would never finish before it was too late. If I don't get all of those dead leaves off the plant and off the soil, it just makes the job much harder later on.

Growth is stimulated by the weather mostly. Pruning off dead or crossing canes shouldn't kill a plant any time of year...

This is one that never made sense to me, i.e. Jan vs Feb. The branch tip does exert apical dominance. This is where the tip of the growing branch inhibits lateral growth because it produces the inhibitory hormone auxin. I think its why some roses become real "leggy" if they aren't pruned- the infill lateral growth has been inhibited. Maybe someone knows of some science behind this one, for or against. I have provided a link from VA Tech on pruning fruit trees- a rose relative from my understanding. As an aside, it states that leave stripping is used to stimulate trees, which makes me wonder about its use in roses to make them go dormant in warmer climates. This latter topic comes up frequently in the winter on this forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pruning fruit trees

When I was a the Southern Spring Show the question of pruning came up. Several of the speakers (including Paul Zimmerman and a gentleman from Witherspoon Roses) said that the time to prune in the Charlotte area is now. I plan on starting this afternoon.

Carole

I always prune my roses during the winter, after they are dormant. I have too many to wait to prune them all in spring. It will not hurt the roses or force them out of dormancy. If you have tender varieties with a lot of die-back (such as teas & chinas), then it is better to wait to prune those so you know the worst of the winter cane damage is done, but otherwise it doesn't matter. I've been doing this for years.

jbcarr,
thanks for the reminder about apical dominance. I know it for (most) fruit trees. And I know it for Hybrid Teas. But.....I'm not sure it applies to all classes of roses. And it's something to contemplate as I wander out in our roses. Two or three days ago I was under some (real) Tea Roses and wondering the 'why' of where new canes emerged. Now's the time to really look for dominance and try to trace it within classes, as muddled as some of the classifications are.

For people who grow roses in a climate like mine, a medium zone 5 in the middle of Michigan, I could distill everything I think I know about spring pruning to three points:

1) Don't prune too early or you'll just have to prune again; don't prune too late or the plant will just waste it's energy trying to make new growth on damaged wood. Tax time (April 15th) plus or minus a few weeks works for me.

2) Ignore spring pruning advice given in books by people who don't live in your zone. For example, the standard advice to not prune Hybrid Teas until the end of their second year is just silly if you live in zone 5.

3) The one most important rule: Prune back each cane until you see a completely white or green cut surface across the cane, with no brown in the center (this is one case where the standard advice in rose books is correct). If your rose ends up with any canes longer than 6 inches, either you didn't follow this advice, or the winter was unusually mild, or you have some superior method for winter-protection, or your rose is exceptionally cold-hardy, or you don't live in zone 5.