I pruned mine on Sunday, the buds were starting to break on some of them.

You have buds in April???????????? My roses have never budded til May or probably June.

Just leaf buds! Not flowers! Sorry, I should have been more clear - they are starting to leaf out. I had to cut a lot of them back pretty far due to cold damage.

I see a few leaves beginning, but mostly just the stems greening & purpling up.

I maybe should have waited another week, but was dying to get out and do something! Weather is supposed to be decent for us all week.

I haven't pruned anything yet. I did take the pots out of winter storage yesterday and a few were showing some new growth but not many. I'll wait a bit more to prune I think. My forsythia isn't showing any signs of blooming yet. We're not supposed to dip below freezing at all this week but who knows. We've been fooled before!

I pruned last week since weather forecast looked good for awhile... We had temps in the 70's this past Sunday and 80 degrees on Monday which kick started our roses... The next 7 days look good too for us...

I want to second the advice that you can prune out the dead canes at any time. And you should prune them out whenever you see them. Dead and damaged wood can be an entry point for disease.

Nick, you can prune now, but don't be in a hurry, once you prune an new growth starts, its susceptible to frost damage, and our frost date is end of May. Certainly can prune dead wood now.....

Steve.....

I've never had any issues pruning out old canes at the end of March--cutting stuff back all the way to the bud union with a saw. I prefer to do it then, as there is no chance of damaging any basal breaks.

I've pruned out completely dead wood in the Fall. (I mean--dead all the way to the ground). Just spoke with someone who has grown roses for 30 years, and she said I should NOT prune them til May. I'm just biting at the bit to prune because they look so sloppy with canes with dead leaves on them that the Winter never blew off. Yet I know April can be so unpredictable.

Dead wood can come out any time of year. It's dead and of no use to the rose. Some people even believe it can be detrimental because it's an easy opening for disease and insects to get in. Live cane is another matter. You want to keep all the energy stored in those canes for the rose to use. Pruning off live cane in the fall is taking away potential food stores the rose will need to come back with. Of course, if it's a bad winter you may lose most of it to winter kill anyway but if it's not a hard winter, and there is a good bit of viable cane left in the spring, all that stored energy will be of good use to the rose come warm weather. And if there are a couple of freeze/thaw cycles where you lose a bit of new growth, that extra stored energy is VERY important in the rose being able to survive. If you've cut all that cane off and the rose doesn't have that extra energy to restart again after a late hard freeze then your rose will be toast!

Let me tell you a story nickjoseph... When I first moved into our house here their was a shrub rose in the backyard... (5ft X 4ft) I had no idea how to care for roses back then... But I would just let it grow until mid May or so then when I could see what canes did not have leaves I figured that was dead so I then would cut back the dead stems (winterkill) which was usually about a foot from the tips..

But just like you I also chomp at the bit each year to start pruning...lol... Hang in there Nick Joseph...lol

I like to keep an eye on future weather patterns also...

This is our future some nasty low temps coming.8-Day Forecast

Nick if we get any overnight moisture with this coming very chilly air we could see snow flakes. arggggh!

Guess, I'll not be pruning til at least May 1st. I just have to stop looking at the straggly bushes. It's like right before my own hair needs a trim, I'm tempted to pick up a scissors & start lapping away--but you know that would just be bad, so I wait. Guess I have to put the same concept towards my scraggly rose children.

It's true that late frosts will injure new growth willy-nilly, but here's my argument against pruning tender roses early. There is plant energy stored all through the canes, as seil says. The new shoots will sprout first at the highest point of the cane that is capable of any growth, though probably injured by winter, and will sprout using energy stored up in the cane. So when these shoots are injured by a late frost, no harm done, because you are going to prune off the damaged upper cane anyway.

But if you prune early and severely, the shoots will have to come on the lower canes or basally. If these shoots are injured by a late frost, it's a bigger loss to the plant's energy store.

I noticed today while driving that everyones forsythia are in bloom here...But a lot of roses around just have the small swollen leaf buds so far... Ours are a bit more advanced than what I seen today...

Most people around here buy a rose stick it in the ground and forget about it... I seen so much dead wood last year sticking out of peoples roses I wanted to run into their yard and prune the poor things...lol

I live in the Detroit area and did mine yesterday. I was shocked to find leaf buds on them! So much for lopping them down nice and even...