There is definitely a basis for what you're experiencing. In his book, THE ROSE BIBLE, Ray Reddell discusses the distinct advantages (to the gardener as well as to the plant) of removing leaves before pruning. In much the same way you have, Reddell describes the plant's response to having its leaves removed. I followed his advice routinely when I had only a few plants. Removing the leaves definitely makes pruning easier because you get a better 'view' of the structure of the plant. If you have lots of roses, though, total defoliation of each plant by hand can be a daunting task, & I suspect that few gardeners do a thorough job of it. I regularly defoliate young plants, but beyond that, no.

A word to the wise: It's important to CUT the foliage off rather than tear it off and risk damaging the surrounding bark tissue.

It's long been my practice of defoliating new plants brought into my garden from other places. It not only allows you to take a good look at the thing before doing anything with it, but also helps prevent disease and pests from being imported with it. Yes, removing the foliage can often trigger new growth. Consider this, perhaps the remaining foliage is either just hanging on because nothing has caused it to fall or maybe it's keeping the plant fed on a minimum, threshold level. Removing it triggers the rose that all the old stuff is gone and no new food (other than what might be produced by the chlorophyll in the green wood) is forthcoming so it starts to grow new food production capacity.

You could always defoliate as they have in Wasco. Mix up some horticultural oil and burn it all off. Oil seals in the water so hot sun and temperatures approaching 80 degrees fries the leaves and they fall off. I guess you could use it as a dormant spray to smother eggs and spores, if that's your method of gardening. I've been known to study the plant so my initial cuts removed most of the foliage canopy revealing what was underneath.

Ingrid, Malcolm Manners agrees with you. I remember him saying that removing the leaves works the same as making a cut. I guess it's true. I'll be doing it tomorrow.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

I remove old leaves before pruning because in this wet climate they are all diseased anyway by the end of the rainy season.

Hi Ingrid,

When I lived in Southern California I always took all of the leaves off each winter. I don't remember where I learned to do that, perhaps from a neighbour, but in my mind it was sort of "forcing them into winter hibernation" and giving them a rest, and also reducing the chance for disease hanging out from the previous year to infect the new growth.

I think it helped.

best,
robert

well... several people in another thread said I should be removing all roses' leaves in winter to force winter hibernation in my warm climate...

but when I did that, a lot of them just put out lots of new leaves. so ah...?

I'm confused now, too, because my defoliated roses have no intention of going into hibernation, quite the opposite in fact. I wonder whether the temperature is a factor here. We're having quite a warm winter this year as compared to the last few.

Ingrid

Seems to me that the best course of action is simply to allow Mother Nature to do her thing. Despite many decades of rampant hybridization, rose plants remain subject to innate, natural law. In my feeble attempts to thwart Mother Nature I feed, spray and prune, but I think I'll leave the foliation/defoliation thing entirely up to her.