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Deadheading above a bud eye

10 years ago

I have seen videos (online) of just exactly where to deadhead a rose. The videos show the angle cut just
above the next 'bud eye' below the spent bloom. I just looked (glasses on) very closely at my plants and some
of them have a few of these 'eyes', but a some don't seem
to have any at all.

What's the story with this?

AK

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Comments (6)

jerijen
10 years ago
I am under 5 ft. tall.
My sister is about 5-ft., 7 ins. . .

There are huge differences from one rose to another. The bud eye will always be tucked in to the place where the leaf joins the cane.

But what if the stems are long, and there are very few leaves on them -- and thus, few bud eyes? 'International Herald Tribune' as an example, is like that.

The rose puts up HUGE sprays, on nice straight stems, with very few bud eyes. If you cut to "the first bud eye" there's almost no cane left -- and what IS left, a meager stump, may well just never put out any more growth.

So, with a rose like THAT, my final solution was to snip off, or snap off the dead blooms right up at the top of the cane, and let the rose decide what it wants to do. With the cane left intact, the plant takes advantage of the energy in what's there, and puts up more flowering canes.

After a few years, it begins to produce canes with more bud eyes. Yippee!

This is not conventional advice, but it works.

Jeri
michaelg
10 years ago
There are latent bud eyes at every leaf joint, also just below the flower neck and at "bracts' (straplike simple leaves). If you cut above any leaf, a growth bud will emerge. If you just pop off the flower, it will usually sprout from the base of the flower neck.

On older cane sections that have lost their leaves, latent bud sites are visible as little bumps with smiley lines underneath, and are also present at branch points.

Jeri's point is true for roses with large, complex, branching inflorescences.
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Finch -- The hormones that trigger bloom formation rise to the highest point in the stem, so if the rose goes straight up 8 ft., guess where the blooms will be? And yes, some roses also drop their lower leaves. Some people prune ruthlessly after each flush of bloom, to promote another flush, but I think you won't have those plants for many years, if you keep doing that. One approach is to plant something in front of the rose, to cover up its bare legs. (I have heard roses described as "ugly plants with bare bottoms.") Another approach might be to espalier the plant against a fence or wall, pulling canes out on the horizontal (which results in many blooming laterals). Or you can wind long canes around a tripod, to promote the same thing -- blooming laterals. Jeri
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I haven't paid any attention to the 5-leaflet rule for twenty years. It is OK (not necessarily optimal) if you have only hybrid tea roses, but harmful with some cluster-blooming roses, where it can lead you to discard half the plant unnecessarily. These are varieties that form large trusses and candelabra. Deadheading only helps the plant if that variety sets a lot of hips (fruit), and many varieties do not. Many roses do just fine without being deadheaded. If you want to fuss with your roses, just pop off the blooms as they fade. When the whole cluster is gone, you can either leave the branching stem tissue or cut it back some, but don't sacrifice a lot of cane unless the plant is getting too tall. The branching stem tissue is capable of producing shoots wherever there is any kind of leaf or leaflike bract. Once the rose produces new shoots, you can cut off the stem tissue above that if you want. The only rule I follow in deadheading is to remove the minimum stem tissue until the roses gets as big as I want it to be, and to take long stems if the rose is getting too tall or floppy.
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Cear ... If you want to keep them looking absolutely perfect, you can stop each day and snap off each and every faded bloom, leaving the rest to open. I do that, on some cluster-flowering roses, snapping off the faded ones as I pass by. But on a mature Blush Noisette, that is going to eat up so much time, it will drive you up the wall. B.N. does NOT drop its faded blooms. In my climate, they sit there, and turn brown. On a mature plant, there can be so many clusters of so many blooms, removing them can be a full-time job. I've learned to ignore the faded blooms. When the flush is winding down, you'll see that new buds are already forming. Snip off the entire ratty old cluster -- and I do this as high as I can. If there's not a handy bud eye to cut to, I have been known to grab the whole cluster in my left hand, and whack off the blooms ABOVE where they emerge from the cane. The plant will decide where to put out new growth, and I can always clean up later. I just finished doing this to my Roseville Noisettes, and I started on "Jacob Zeisz" this morning, before the sun came out from the clouds and drove me into the house. I'll continue tomorrow. It's a big rose now, with literally hundreds of clusters, so it takes some time, even doing it that way. Jeri
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"That dark mulch you have is helping to cook the roots. It looks black. Is it?" Yes it is. I thought it was good to add mulch so that the soil doesn't dry up? And also to help insulate in the winter? I went ahead and deadheaded just below the flower, and also removed leaves that had a lot of brown on them. I'm not sure of my zone, but I'm in the Huntington area, bordering Ohio and Kentucky. Thank you all for your feedback!
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andreark
Original Author
10 years ago
I feel much better now about deadheading to produce more
blooms.

Thanks a lot.

AK
seil zone 6b MI
10 years ago
The rule was always to cut just above the first 5 leaf set in the past. Gramma did that, Mom did that and I did that for years. The roses, however, made their own decisions on where they wanted to grow from so I found it didn't make a hill of beans difference where I cut it off. Besides, not all roses have 5 leaf sets. It depends on the type of rose. I do what Jeri does now and just snap off the spent bloom at the base of the hip. If a rose is getting too large or growing oddly and I want to shape it then I'll prune it as need be when I deadhead but otherwise I let it grow how it wants too.
jerijen
10 years ago
"Bend and Snap."

It's actually what my grandmother always did, and taught me to do.
Then, ARS taught me that was wrong.

Only, then, I found out it really was RIGHT for the roses I grow. So, I'm back to doing what my Nanny taught me to do.

I should have known my Nanny was right. She always was.

Jeri
Tuggy3
10 years ago
I always went the five leaf route because that's what I was told. Sometimes it just didn't feel right and rebloom was so slow on some. This is great information. Mary

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