It really depends upon what sort of rose you are deadheading, and how established the plant is. But in the case of very new plants, only added to the garden this year, I personally would elect to snap the bloom off, and leave the rose to establish more growth. Once the plant is a year or so old, you can start cutting lower, particularly if you're dealing with Hybrid Tea Roses. Once you are dealing with MATURE plants: If you are trying to produce long-stemmed blooms for cutting, you will cut fairly far down on the stem, even if you are deadheading. If you want garden display, you can cut higher, and leave the plant more energy to work with. Jeri

here ya go ga. 7b-8 depends on what map you look at.. plants that are going in greenhouse are app. 5-6' tall which are possibly going to fruit, if they fruit i'll keep them in buckets like the Dwarf Orinoco (pic below)and keep my fingers crossed. love these buckets as they're short and big around, this will help keep it from being top heavy. notice all leaves have been cut off except growing leaf. these leaves will yellow and die off after plant has been pulled, take a bit but will start to grow again in gh.. Dwarf Orinoco i've already pulled pups and potted up in 3 gal containers. these pups are about 12-14" with corm formed, they'll go to gh. plants that have fruit haven't been touched, as the bunches will be cut down before first frost to ripen inside. the ones that are expected to fruit in gh, pups are being cut down even with soil line.. this should give you a great big corm on pup next year.. mainly to help it fruit and ripen quicker. my tall fruiters will be dug up and all leaves are cut except growing leaf then stored under house. i don't cover, water or bother during winter . i do keep them off ground, they're stacked on top of old tires and one heat vent from house heating .. example of what you can get in 2 years growing tall plant, carries 5 bunches app. 7-9 fruits per hand. Tall Orinoco ? pic below has one d.o. in back middle with fruit, bunches will be cut before frost, to house to ripen. two 5' pups in front will be seperated and put into big wash pans like above and placed in gh for winter. the smaller pups will be potted up and put in gh. gh will only be kept just above freezing and will dip below at times, for short periods. gh is kinda like a moist zone 9 winter without the frost.. d.o. carried fruit last year to ripen this spring..

Not sure I'll have a lot of room under lights this year. Maybe I'll keep it up in my office which gets good afternoon sun. Bill, we're already almost into mid Sept. I don't know how much longer the hot weather will last. The Guilotts Sunset is looking good too, but no inflo yet.

those are the pictures. I put an arrow showing where the trunk is on the larger (7 year old approx) plant. Because last year I cut all to the right of it off thinking it might have bugs in the wood (someone suggested that before). It grew back but no fruit on that side. Anyway, some notes: I was thinking it being against the fence is not letting it breathe and thus not helping the moisture situation. The smaller plant in the corner of fence I propagated off this last fall and the grapes have the same problem. I was thinking it's because the fence, and maybe it didn't do this previous years because the vine is denser now thus preventing air flow but the one in the corner is young but has this problem (but yes it's under a maple in corner and it being a corner means less air flow. I guess it's just fungal thing from moisture like all you are suggesting. I do get a decent amount of grapes from this still. One pic of the interior shows a lot of green grapes hopefully will be edible in a month or so. (I just spit out the skin and sour core but I stand there and eat these for an hour a few times a year :) also don't mind the crabgrass taking over the border bed! I didn't bag enough grass in spring and by the time I planted mostly strawberries and some tomatoes and some eggplant the grass isn't growing that much in mid summer to mulch all my garden areas so I gotta rip the crabgrass out asap like I've been doing. Hopefully strawberries fill it in though. I like low maintenance perennial fruit :) EDIt: oh, what do you mean mummies? Like the dead grape things? Even if all the grapes fell off, I should still cut the 'bunch' part off of the main branches? Thanks. I might build a large trellis, cedar (don't F with pressure treated lumber in the garden) and maybe that'll help this situation, maybe make it worse though. Oh and need to mention an overgrown lot I frequent has white concords growing. 5 years ago I filled 3 shopping bags and they were perfect. It's being overtaken by brush and trees so it's not producing like it used to but it has a lot of shade but I don't think I've ever noticed this problem with those grapes. It's 10 min drive away in regards to 'wet spring'. I don't want to spray this plant with fungicide even though I don't hesitate to eat store-bought grapes which are probably heavily sprayed (I was them, but still), but maybe if I do a little fungicide and then hose it off really well before eating will be ok but I think I'd rather take what I can get from this vine without chems. Remove all dead grapes on ground too or leave as compost? thanks again