Vigorous roses require a lot of pruning if you want them to perform at their best. You should do this in the spring and all summer to encourage the rose to grow the way you want it to. Old canes get woody and the pith gets dry and brown and the cane becomes less productive. You need new canes to come forth at the base of the rose . With these mild winters where canes just refuse to die you have to force the issue by pruning severely big canes that may be three-five years old and are not performing. You may have a huge bush but if most of the new growth is way up the bush it is in trouble. The rose has to continually regenerate and that is the main point of pruning.

What if the rose is only three years old? Are the woody canes the ones you always prune first regardless of the type, i.e, shrubs, HTs, OGRs with more twiggy growth?

Redsox, this may help you out.

http://www.rosenut.com/rosecare/pruning.htm

JIM

You may find this interesting Redsox. The below rose is a OWN-ROOT Precious Platinum Hybrid Tea. It was a Baby band from Heirloom Roses planted July of 07.
Also being new to pruning roses, I made some errors in pruning this past Spring. I was very unsure of myself on what to do. This rose puts out many canes and I had canes growing to close to each other and crossing and I left them that way. Well, during the season canes got injured from rubbing and I had a mess. So, I had no choice, but, to cut them out and 2 canes actually broke off.

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I'll have to take a recent pic of it tomorrow and post it here.

I went to our local rose meeting this week. They said to have at it and prune away. I asked what if we have an early frost in the first half of October? They said most unlikely.

Then today in the newspaper's weekly gardening column, it said don't prune your rosebushes to stimulate new growth, too late.

It probably won't harm the rose, but really, what do you have to gain by pruning now? I'd wait till spring.

What I do is after the first hard frost, I 'top' my roses, meaning I cut them down to about 3-4 feet, depending on the rose bush. It looks neater for the winter and you don't have long canes to whip about in winter storms.

I too have to prune more severly this spring. I've taken it easy on many of my roses since the big Easter Freeze in 2007 and 3 years of drought. But like you, I've been forced to remove dead/dying canes in mid summer that probably should have been removed in the spring.

What does give me hope is 2 big roses that I cut way down this year. My huge Teasing Georgia's trellis was destroyed in 2 succesive wind storms early this summer. I had to cut the trellis off, which meant cutting the whole bush down to almost nothing. Well, I guess all the rain and the sun finally hitting the graft of this rose (since there were no huge canes in the way anymore) it put out about a dozen new basals!!! Now it's almost a monster again. I have to get a pillar or something to put it on. I also cut my huge ZD back a lot while tying it up the deck pole. It also put out many new canes and new growth on existing canes.

But I do think right now is a bit late, especially since you are a bit further north than I am.

Don't prune severely this time of the year. In your climate, new basals that emerge in the fall will be damaged or killed by winter. Then you will have caused the rose to waste a lot of its stored energy. Probably the new foliage would not be in place long enough to replace these carbs, especially in the weak late-season sun and long shadows.

In spring pruning, the white-pith rule should be applied fairly strictly to HTs and floribundas, not necessarily to hardy shrubs. In spring, prune green-barked canes strictly to white pith. Old barky canes will develop tan pith with age, not always because of freezing. Even with HTs, these canes may be good for a couple more years. If they are sprouting well, I usually cut them back to 12" rather than all the way down. With hardier types of roses, I assume that sprouting barky canes are good, despite tan pith. Dark brown pith is always bad.

I suggest you tag old canes that seem unproductive, check them again in a month, and plan to remove the less productive ones in spring. 3-year-old canes should not be wearing out. It's possible you left winter-damaged segments after the first or second winter.

To sum up: be strict with green canes; experiment with barky canes that are 2-5 years old; remove very old canes when they become unproductive; don't prune severely after early August.

When it is like this with ideal growing conditions roses will continue to produce basals and you lose some come winter. The big thick green canes just get bigger and everything gets more crowded. Pruning now wont encourage or discourage new growth. It is just sculpting the rose and I do it almost every time I go out in the garden usually while I'm deadheading which is a never ending task. Now I'm taking out all inferior growth, all woody canes and any canes that I think are five years or older. Many years ago I experimented with heavy vs. light pruning in the spring. Heavy is better.

I hated to prune my Precious Platinum hard later in the summer, but, I had no other choice. Now, i'll have to pray it makes it through the winter. But, i've learned alot about pruning from the experiences with this bush.

Here's todays pic of Platinum.

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Redsox,I think I know what you are talking about. In April I prune down the winterkill, and there are many canes that still look viable so I leave them. I come back 2 weeks later and canes that looked good before now show signs of damage, so I then prune them off. There are many canes that appear ok and are putting on new growth, but there is some damage along the way that I am unable to see and every summer there are some canes that look dead that I need to prune off.

OK, here's a pruning question that is confusing me. I have a new lavender rose (Sterling Silver) that I've been babying along all summer. I read here that I should prune ALL the buds off of it all summer to give it a chance to make lots of leaves to store up energy for the winter. Well, after a crappy summer, it finally leafed out, but now it's making buds (yes, thanks, Mr. SS). Should I still prune off these buds? Or will that stress the plant even more?

It doesn't matter, because cold weather will stop all rose growth for you very soon, maybe next week.

"It finally leafed out." Has it been defoliated by blackspot disease? You have to control this disease if you want hybrid teas to store energy for next year. Also the graft swelling has to be protected from winter by deep planting or by mounding. Most or all exposed wood will be damaged by subzero temperatures.

Most of us let first-year roses bloom. Just don't remove stems and leaves from weak plants.

Remember, modern roses bloom on new wood. Attempting to save a lot of canes in spring doesn't really do the bush or yourself a favor. We complain about our winter dieback but it does us a favor because we have to prune severely each spring. This gives us lots of new growth and many flowers.
In summer, I prune the hybrid teas back pretty far each time I deadhead or cut a bloom. This keeps the bush producing new canes and flowers.
Here's a quick link to the website mentioned above

Here is a link that might be useful: pruning roses

A really tall bush doesn't necessarily mean a healthy bush. In Florida and areas where fortuniana root stock thrives a hybrid tea can get 10-12 feet or taller. In cooler climates with own roots or Dr Huey/multiflora grafted roses, a tall bush only means a lot of energy going to the canes and leaves. It doesn't mean more flowers. I'd much rather have a shorter but wider bush with lots of flowers.
While most bushes in my garden are no more than 3-4 feet tall on a good day, they have new canes and bloom repeatedly all summer. I don't have to stretch to reach the blooms either.
If I sprayed, less of it would be required.

The "removing buds on new plants" thing is usually just for small own root plants so that they start growing roots. For grafted plants (bareroots or potted bought locally), there isn't any reason to remove buds, since their roots are 2+ years old already.

Sterling Silver isn't the greatest rose east of the Rockies. It will need regular treatment for blackspot, there is no way around it. Good luck with it.

So say you have a tall and gangly bush (read: Mister Lincoln). How would you prune it in Spring? Say you cut it down to 12-24 inches in Spring. Will it still put up these tall canes to reach 6+ feet? I really don't enjoy the blooms up there.

Deb, yes, it will. You can try to keep it shorter during the growing period, but, if it is their habit, Mister Lincoln (and many hybrid teas) want to grow tall and put out their long stems.

Each time you deadhead, cut the cane way back. A new cane will grow but the shorter cane it grows from will limit its overall height. A three foot cane growing from a cane pruned to 12 to 18 inches will not end up as tall as a similar one growing from a cane pruned back to four feet. Your summer maintenance practices can limit the overall height of the bush. My experience is that a shorter pruned plant tends to bush out more and get wider. By choice, my hybrid teas stay within the 3-5 feet tall range

Boy, do I have alot to learn!! I am a TERRIBLE pruner! My roses are so tall and leggy. I just did not do a good job with my clippers. This winter I have promised myself that I will read and study about pruning and do a better job next spring. Maybe this is one reason my roses don`t produce many blooms. Thanks to all of you`all that give us such good and productive information.I love my garden so much, but it can be much much better. Lesley

Karl, thank you for confirming that for me! I wondered if the height could be managed by soing exactly what you are saying to do and you say it can.

You must be consistant and cut way back each time you deadhead a bloom. Many bushes want to grow tall and will do so if you let up.

That is the key point with this technique, thanks Karl!

One other thing, by cutting back each cane at different times, you can have flowers blooming almost continuously. As the bush spreads out it's easier to do this.

Thank you!