There are mixed opinions about this one, so I can only tell you what I do. If the young rose is a vigorous band with lots of growth and buds I'll leave almost all of them on. If its rather small and weak I'll leave one on so I can see if it's the correct rose, and then pinch the rest until it attains a good size. If it's somewhere in between I take off at least half the buds.

Ingrid

Thanks Ingrid, that makes a lot of sense.

Diane

yep, i would agree - it is very hard to remove all that promise but you can satiate your curiosity at least by leaving one or two- i have just had to de-fruit all my new apples and last year, I had to be really hard-hearted and remove the flowers from the stawberries - but hey, this year, there will be NO restraint.

Thanks for all your thoughts. I needed some enabling to perform the task and am happy to hear that depending on the rose, it doesn't need to be a clean sweep.

Enjoy your strawberries, Campanula.

I'm a strong proponent of disbudding young ownroots, & even some newly planted grafted roses. I show no mercy -- I disbud with a vengeance. I want to encourage as much top growth as possible, knowing that the root system must expand simultaneously in order to support what's going on above the soil -- and, IMHO, it's difficult to overstate the importance of an extensive, healthy root system.

In a discussion on HMF, Kim Rupert wrote one of the best explanations I've read concerning why disbudding contributes to a more rapid development of young plants. The following two paragraphs quote Mr Rupert on the subject:

"The 'trick' with weak growing roses is to not let them bloom for one full season. When a plant doesn't make that much energy, it will either direct it to growth or flowers. Most often, it's flowers, in an effort to reproduce, before it dies. The American Rose Society used to fund research in the rose industry. I remember reading in one of the printed reports, that they discovered it took 35 perfect leaves to make 1 perfect flower! That shows you how much energy it takes away from growth, doesn't it?

. . . Back to the 'secret': It's going to take some self denial for a few months to most of a growing season. When you see buds forming, pinch them off. Leave every leaf in place because they're needed to feed the plant and make it bloom. For every 35 leaves, you'll get a flower. If you want a hundred flowers, you'll need roughly 3,500 leaves. The rose is genetically programmed to grow until it has enough energy to flower (ovulate) in hopes of setting seed (pregnancy). When you interrupt the ovulation, all that energy is redirected back into growth, in hopes of ovulating (flowering) again. By keeping all those leaves and canes, the plant becomes larger, more vigorous and pushes more growth, and rather quickly!"

While I don't have the intestinal fortitude Kim does, I DO follow his advice, and for the most part disbud young own-root plants.
I'll keep ONE bud, just to make sure that I have what I think I have, but otherwise, I do disbud.

Jeri

'intestinal fortitude' - love it!

I think it really depends on a plant, if it is growing well I generally leave it to do whatever pleases it, but if it is tiny little thing, I often leave one blossom and even that sometimes I cut before it is fully open.

After reading Kim Rupert's comments I decided to harden my heart and take some more buds off my smaller roses. My main reason is that some of the garden areas look a little bare because the roses are so tiny and for the overall look I think a larger bush is actually more important than rose production. Leveson-Gower is a good example: The flowers are so pretty that I'm tempted to let them bloom but the plant is really tiny and that creates an ugly gap in the front garden. I was out at midnight disbudding roses with a flashlight. So fortunate that I don't have neighbors who can see me!

Ingrid

Thanks for more information regarding this!