Oh, Rita,
I feel your pain. Here in Louisville, the forsythia is starting to bloom and many of the roses are getting baby leaves, I have not pruned yet as I know we will have lots more freezing weather. I sure want to get out there and work! I have probably lost a few roses due to our harsh winter and my moderate winter protection. Brass Band, Marilyn Monroe, Falling In Love are completely black.I have a spring order coming and will add locally if needed. We must be patient so hold on there! Play smart...Have a great garden this year....Lesley

Me too. I went and sprayed lime sulfur yesterday since the weather was finally nice. It was more for the fruit trees but I had a bunch leftover so the roses got some too. Most of my roses look black all the way to the ground. I didn't pull back the mulch to look for green but I'm sure they'll be fine. I just have to have some patience since we might get more snow by the end of the month so I can't be pruning yet. I have to keep repeating that to myself since I really want to prune and see if I have anything left.

Marilyn Monroe is tougher than you'd think. Mine started last year at the soil line and regrew into a huge bush.

I didn't order anything either but I'm planning on getting at least a few roses locally. It's almost impossible not to.

If I waited for the forsythia to bloom, who knows when I would be prunning. Too late for sure. Today is a really nice day so I went and took a good long walk in the garden so I could really look at everything. The roses in the back that I had been watching show no signs of leaves but the ones in the bed all along the side of the house have big leaf buds swelling so the roses are starting to grow.

There are alot of roses so it takes some time to get them done. Especially in the spring as all the prunning is done at once. Later in the year, I prune here and there as flushes end but its not usually all at once.

Its still chilly, I have to go out in my thick winter coat. Would have to wear the thick winter garden coat, not the more spring jacket for working outside. Still I think I will start on the prunning either by the end of the week or early next week for sure.

Help. Three questions. (1.) I'm in MI and I've already started pruning! I only pruned a few. Will they survive? (2.) Also, because of our very hard winter, rabbits have been eating the bark off my rosebushes. Will they survive and is there anything I should be doing? (3.) I have a rambler that did really bad last year. Should I cut it back to the ground or just dig it up. Don't remember the name. It was beautiful the first couple of years.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Beccarose

Don't know about rabitt damage cause I don't have bunnies here. But if your pruning shrub roses, floribundas or Hybrid teas they should be fine. I find that too eary prunning makes extra work. I prune and then if its gets too cold I get more winter damage and I have to prune again. So better to wait and be able to do the spring prunning only once.

Rita,
I am nearly finished my pruning. Alfalfa goes on this weekend.

What are you waiting for? I'd figured you Long Islanders were out gardening in your shorts and tank tops by now.

Spring will officially be here Friday after lunch, so your time is drawing near fast. I know how you feel though, because we pruned Valentine's Day, and have many buds ready to open soon. Hang in there, your time's coming.

They are waiting so their pruning fingers are fresh when they come and help me :-) We can't have tired fingers, can we?

I spent yesterday cutting back the blue fescue around the iris bed. So now I have cute little blue-green tribbles ringing that bed. I also have the beginnings of a blister at the bottom of my palm from the sheep shears. If I go back to roses today, maybe I'll end up with a blister somewhere else.

On one of those videos of Ashdown Roses: start pruning when the forsythias start blooming. So, I'll go with that. But I am tempted since harryshoe had pruned already. We should not be too far from each other. I am almost in NJ, how far inland are you Harry?

I've just started touching up my roses today, pulling the leaves out from around the base and just clipping off some twiggy growth. I have leaf buds just poking out everywhere on every rose cane. The daffadils are blooming and the tulips are coming up too. I have some yellow showing on a forsythia bush right around the corner so I'm going to be diving in to the full pruning next week for sure. I believe spring has sprung!

senko, no forsythia here yet... No daffs (although my friend just south of me has one), just the last of the crocus. Not that I'm complaining, I have what essentially be two years worth of pruning to do, plus the weeding. :-P

Such a time of waiting and wanting!! This too shall pass, and we'll be rewarded for the long wait!! Although since I've seen buds on my potted roses in the garage, I'm so excited that I can hardly stand it!

Carol

For Beccarose - You want to wait to prune when you want the bush to start growing. Pruning stimulates growth so if you do it too early and get a frost, then you lose all the new growth and have to start over. I don't know what your weather is like in Michigan, but here we get frosts for at least another month so it's too early even though it feels like spring right now.

As for the rabbit damage - don't worry about it. Just prune below the damage and the bush will regrow. Keep an eye out and if the rabbits come back then you'll have to start doing something to keep them from eating your roses. A chicken wire cage around each rose works best but there are sprays that can work okay too.

For the rambler - how did it do bad? You might want to start a new thread on it to get better advice.

I did go out yesterday and start to prune and cleanup the garden for spring. Cut back the Catmints, pulled old stalks from lilies and such that were still standing, did some non rose shrub pruning especially on the butterfly bushes and started on the roses. I was going to continue today but its raining. Not enough rain to mean anything, just too wet to work outside. Guess I will just have to continue on Friday but its supposed to get colder again. Not really cold, just that yesterday was so nice and warm at about 60.

I was pruning again today. Still have plenty more to do but the whole bed along the side of the house is done. It was still chilly this morning, a crust of ice was on the birdbath water. I waited until afternoon and it warmed up.

The spring pruning is lots of work because I have lots of HTs and those of course need lots of pruning. But I prune down everything including my Floribundas and shrub roses. Doesn't make much difference on HTs, they just grow tall no matter what but on the Floribundas and shrub roses it does encourage them to grow nice and thick and twiggy instead of tall and lanky.

Most of the HTs are on Dr Huey but I did order some roses two years ago that were grafted on Multifloria. I noticed that they grew much slower than the ones grafted on Dr Huey. So I did not cut them back quite as much. Also, this is a very unscientic observation but the ones on Multiflora have no canker and did not really NEED to be cut back while the HTs on Dr Huey always have lots of canker canes and need a strong prunning in the spring.

As they are all treated all the same and planted in the same beds I do not know what else it could be but rootstock.

Well, I am done with the rose pruning. Just finished the last today which is my little mini hedge of four LAVAGLUT roses. This week coming I plan to go buy some bags of Alfalfa pellets and scatter them accross the garden. Probably early for that too but I do not plan on scatching them in so mother nature and spring rains will have to get those pellets broken down for me.

All the roses and the rose gardens look really good this year. I think the spring flush will be the best ever yet if we do not get some bad weather at bloom time to mess up things (like drenching rain that we had one year).

I'm glad I'm still waiting. We had a few inches of snow last night and everything is all white outside today. It's supposed to stay cold this week with lows below freezing so it will be at least one more week before I prune anything.