You're pretty close in latitude to me, brkieffner. Follow Interstate 74 straight east to I-72 and I'm in Decatur, IL. I leave as much plant material on the rose as possible during its first year of growth because our biggest conerns here are blackspot and winter survival. Like Jeri said, don't cut long stems on your babies! A first year rose looks drastically different in size and stem girth than a 2nd or 3rd year rose. Usually my 1st year roses have beautiful blooms, but they are dangling from weak & thin stems on an immature plant and they won't stand up in a vase anyway. I either float the bloom in a bowl, or fill a wine bottle to the very top & stick a bloom with a short stem in it. Humidity affects the way a rose's scent is carried in the air, and certain roses (like Mr. Lincoln) are more heavily perfumed than others. I've noticed that with the windows shut and the air conditioner running, there's a lot less humidity in the house and a lot less rose perfume wafting about. However, if the windows are open and the humidity indoors is up, 2 or 3 roses can make the kitchen, dining room, and living room smell heavenly.

Hello Monica, Pruning when the forsythia blooms is a good guide. I usually prune early to mid April. You can also tell when the roses are ready to by the swelling of the buds on the stems. Hybrid teas and floribundas are usually pruned harder than shrub roses, which you can prune for shape. Your ground cover roses, may not need much pruning. If they were about the height I wanted, I would probably shear them with hedge shears and clean up with pruners. You can remove dead wood from your roses any time of year. If you have roses that are once blooming (June only), do not prune them in spring or you'll cut off the blooms. Once bloomers are pruned right after they finish blooming. I'm in the Utah Rose Society and would like to direct you to the URS website www.utah-rose.com. You can read some info about many rose topics there, and there is contact information for the number of local Consulting Rosarians. If you have specific questions you can call any of them on the phone and they'd be happy to answer your questions. If you email, Jerry and June are the ones that read their email most often. You can also check out Bob Bauer's website. He's a SLC rosarian who also is the URS webmaster, and has his own rose site www.rose-roses.com. Here's a quote from his site on fall pruning. Preventitive Fall Pruning For those areas with true winter seasons, you should get your roses ready for their winter sleep after the first killing frost or BEFORE the first big winter snowstorm. The reason you want to prune at this time is to prevent winter damage to the plant from the breaking off of large canes. Take a look at each bush and lop off all of the large candelabras on the end of tall canes. This is the point at which accumulating snow can breat the whole cane off. Also big crossing branches need to be removed so that they don't saw each other to death during winter wind storms. Any long whiplike canes that could cause damage to itself or other plants should be removed. DO NOT, however do your major pruning at this time. Your roses need to use the stored energy from the canes in order to survive winter in a health fashion. Major Pruning of modern recurrent varieties should only be done in the spring in areas with a true winter. If you find yourself interested in the Society, we meet the third Thursday of every month except January and I would encourage you to come check out a meeting. Here's a link to Bob's Spring pruning page. Barb Here is a link that might be useful: spring pruning

Prune after the 15th of September and only take off about 1/4 of the bush. Your cuts should be at a slight angle about 1/4" above an outward facing leafset (bud eye) and removal of any dead canes. Usually you would be removing any crossing canes, also, but you might want to wait until the hard pruning time in January before taking very much off...breaking you in, so to speak. All debris needs to be raked up and disposed of and a light application of rose food and chelated iron added to the top 2" of soil, watered well before and after application. It's a good idea to remove the dead leaves in September but not ALL the leaves. You'll do that in January. Here's the instructions for the winter/January pruning. In January, prune off as much as 1/2 to 3/4 of your bush height, leaving 3-5 good, strong canes. In September, we prune lighter....about 1/4 of the height. This is specifically for hybrid teas older than 2 years. For newer plantings, take off less. I'm hesitant to prune my roses right now because the daytime temps are still over 70 degrees and they think it's spring! I'll prune my bushes that are out of bloom or those that have already bloomed then wait to prune others until the end of their bloom cycle....before Feb 15. Within 6 wks they'll have leaves and within 8 weeks they'll have buds. If you have floribundas, grandifloras, shrubs or climbers to prune, plan the following: floribundas & grandifloras.....cut below the candelabras (one cane with many stems) This may be 1/2 the bush, maybe less. shrubs...once-bloomers are only pruned after they've bloomed, usually June. Perpetual bloomers, for example, David Austins, are pruned to about 1/2 size with crossing canes removed. Climbers...these guys need a good two years in the ground before they get a major pruning but after that, plan to take as much as 1/2 but tie the canes so they flow horizontal, allowing for vertical stems that will produce your new growth. All leaves off, all bushes. Rake up the mess and put in trash, not in compost. The summer instructions are water, water, no food, afternoon shade and more water. The spring instructions are water, feed, water, spray for bugs, spray for powdery mildew, water. For more information contact MoRoseAZ on our AZ Forum -- MoRoseAZ is a Consulting Rosarian in the Phoenix area and a member of the AZ West Valley Rose Society, Mesa/East Valley Rose Society and American Rose Society. She's always happy to help with rose questions. Thank you for the information MoRoseAZ!

Do you have pear trees or those pink weeping cherries? Those are blooming here now, too. And other orchard trees like peaches and apricots. I usually just prune out the discolored canes from winter, back until the canes are nice and green. Then prune out any canes that will cross too closely to another one (unless it's a small plant that needs all the canes and leaves it can get). You can take some height off of most modern roses if you like (or leave them tall), but if the rose only blooms once a year wait until after it blooms to do that. Some of the good canes may not actually be a great green. I have some that get kind of purple in the winter. That's fine. And some old canes can look kind of dead when they are just woody, so look for live buds pushing leaves if it's a particularly woody rose bush. Then you do have to cut off canes that have bad, cankered spots in them. You have to cut those off below the cankered area. Those are usually pretty obvious, I think (or I don't worry about the small ones). I hate to have to cut off long canes for that, but if you have a big bad spot on any cane, the cane will have to come off sometime. The canker can spread/creep down and up the cane, so go on and take care of that before the rose wastes all kinds of energy on the cane. Sterilize your pruners between cuts when dealing with canker.