I do not have that many roses so I put the cut branches into a large plastic trash can with wheels then haul it by pick-up truck to our city lawn waste facility which is only 4 blocks away.

I use a wheel barrow but if your having trouble controlling one maybe a wagon would be better since it has 4 wheels instead of one. I have seen a really nice wagon at lowes that looks durable and should work for you.

I chop mine into small pieces for either compost or mulch.

A wheeled trash can would probably be your best bet, I have a wheel barrel but it has four wheels. Don't know what I'd do without it. It was made by rubbermaid and I love it. Can't do the three wheel ones either. The wagon carts from Menards or home depot are pretty nice. I'm lucky that I have woods behind me to lay my cuttings in.

I put mine in wheeled big plastic trash cans, my town picks up on trash day. I normally have 3-7 cans full for them to pick up by the side of road every week during the growing season. :-)

Actually those big wheeled trash cans would be the most reasonable price wise. Mine does double duty. I use it in the fall to gather leaves and in between For storage. Tarps, extra bags of dirt even pots will fit nicely in there.

Here in Canada we have to compost our garden trimmings. I gather my rose branches into the large brown paper bags. Then I have to take them to the dump to their giant compost site. It is much easier to handle them in the brown paper bags than the plastic as the canes do not poke through the paper. The bags are at least 4 feet tall.

onewheeler, I too use those large paper bags that you can get from either Lowes or Home Depot. They aren't expensive and I can shove cuttings down in the bag and pack it very full. Fortunately I can set them at the curb for recycle to pick up.

I mow the branches over a bunch of times with the mower in the yard. Works for me, but not for everyone. Super simple, no clean up.

Whatever I cut from the roses I snip into tiny bits and let it fall in the beds. When pruning is done, I throw down some organic fertilizer, and cover it with a thin fresh layer of used coffee grounds. With that on top of the snipped bits of rose canes, it doesn't take long for them to break down.

:-)

~Christopher

I have an electric chipper/shredder Chipper Joe CJ601E. It makes quick work of all my rose canes. I do my pruning in the fall when the canes are loaded with leaves and it still takes them all without problems. It takes branches up to 1 1/2" thick. I love it!! No more hunting for boxes. I just spread the chipped canes back on the beds and I am good to go. I know that not everyone can do that because of diseases, but it works fine here because we have none.

Their big red classic wagon works great.
Radio Flyer web page

zack_lau z6 CT, I have one of those Radio Flyer wagons in the attic. Bought it in 1990 for our son. Forgot all about it...

All great suggestions! My husband just informed me he has another wheelbarrow, a two-wheeler he said is easy to control.

I'm going to check out the large paper sacks. I like that idea.

I can't use the limbs as mulch because of our dogs and cats. I fear they'll step on a thorn.

I do like wirosarian, with a little help from bungee cords. I use a slightly larger tarp (8x10?) with grommets all around the edge, dragging it from area to area. The tarp is slick, so it takes very little effort. When I get a "load", I bungee the two rear corners together and add another bungee at the halfway point of the sides. It holds a vast amount of clippings and I rarely lose any on the way to my compost pile.

Oh, addendum: on my dedicated pruning tarp I also have a short length of nylon cord tied in each corner of the "front". It's easier than trying to hold onto the corners themselves with gloved hands.

(trip-saving) John

I am really surprised your towns won't pick it up for your guys. That's part of your property tax you paid for........

I guess I'm a little blessed living on 3/4 acre lot. I have a circled burn pit in the back corner of my lot. I burn all my garden waist (except fall leafs). Then during late winter I spread all the ash on my rose beds. Everything recycled. I usually use a 25 gal. nursery pot to put all my cuttings in. Very little weight involved

I cannot even imaging bagging rose clippings. wow! You folks are imoressive.

I used to shove them into our rolling trash container and put out for weeksfor out garbage pick up.

I have also loaded up my pick up truck and taken to organic dump area of municipal dump for $10.

I currently burn them all in our fire pit and that works amazing! I will never do anything else. Ever! They burn great, and no thorns left over!

Adrianne

summersrythum, you wouldn't want the garbage collector to get his finger pricked by a rose thorn!! You should have heard the fuss my collecter made when it happened. I told him not to bother complaining to me, I grow half an acre of roses. Big deal. A chipper is ideal but alas expensive. I lay the cuttings out in a wheelbarrow, then wrap a piece of rope around them so when I get to the dump, I just lift them out en masse. Some little pieces remain but I don't get stabbed by the long ones.

summersrhythm, the nearest town is 15 miles from me. I live on a 110-ish acre farm. So trash pickup is the least of my worries. Think deer, raccoons, voles, moles, rabbits, groundhogs, coyotes (not a danger to plants, but to my cats!). Disposing of my own rose trimmings is the EASY part, lol.

(countrified) John

I have a collapsible garden bag I haul around to prune with. I cut them into smaller pieces as I go along and put them in the bag. Then they go in the big yard waste can and out to the curb for pick up. I used to use a big kitty litter bucket but my nephew got me the bag for Christmas a couple years ago and I really like it. It's big and holds a lot but isn't heavy to lug about the yard.

John I hear you, add to that those in the know have decided to reestablish the bobcat in Illinois.

I see 2 things I'd love to have. Seil that garden bag looks nice!

Rebecca, have you had your chipper for very long. I was looking at them last year but afraid to spend the money on it.

Patty, I just forgot to include bobcats, lol. They don't bother me for the most part, and don't seem to bother my cats. And I didn't mention the turkeys, although they just tend to scratch in the mulch without too much damage, lol.

Lordy Turkeys they bring the coyotes closer. I wish I was on a farm so I could shoot them. I'm a lover of everything in nature. Don't even like swatting flies but coyotes are just plain vicious if hungry enough a baby is fair game.

Ok I feel like I should delete that comment it so goes against my nature. They just scare me.

Oldrosarian, a couple of times they won't pick up my 7 cans of throns, I called everybody in the highway dept in the phone book, they came back for the throns pretty quickly. I only have 7 trash cans for rose, I need them every week during the season for having over 500 roses. :-)

John, you have a farm? My goodness what do you do with 110 acres?! You could have a dirt bike trail, a camp ground, a rose garden for weddings, a storage unit for RVs, boats, a chicken farm, a goat farm, a tree farm......... What kind of farm do you have?? :-)

I'm also in the country on a couple of acres. I'm just grateful that the company that picks trash up in town lets those of us in the country rent our own dumpster, with pick-up every two weeks.

We have bobcats, coyotes, and turkeys. Winter is when men out here go coyote hunting because they kill a lot of cattle. They scare me too! Had a bobcat in the backyard once and I had best not ever seen one again. :)

Patty, I have had my chipper for three seasons. If this one would die, I would buy another just like it. I LOVE IT! I used to hate hunting for boxes, cutting up canes to fit, stomping down the canes, and treating the thorn cuts on my legs! Now, I wear leather gloves, clip down 1 bush at a time and away it goes in a box at the bottom! Kinda like vaccuming dust bunnies!

Rebecca

Patty, I've had my chipper for over 15years, and wouldn't be without it. It just makes pruning season so much easier (and tidier) when I don't have piles of branches laying about, waiting to be cut up to fit into the recycling bin. Melodye

I burn mine as well. It works great.

i strip off the thorns from my canes, and give them to my 3 large dogs to chew into little pieces. they love them. then the mower goes over the bits of leftover canes.

carol

Ok, Rebecca and Ozmelodye are awesome with their bad selves and the chippers. I would burn, but I'm in Arizona and I'm not comfortable doing that. I cut them all down and have an extra trash bin for nine bucks for Spring season. It stinks that we don't have a landscape recycle program where I live.

I'm lucky, the borough has brush pickup, and the canes go out with other woody items.

I posted this on another link.

Some time back a poster asked how others loaded their trash bags with
rose cane trash. They may have been on a different forum but in case
they were here they can look up this vendor’s product: Lawson Products
Easy Bagger 40500. You just insert the plastic sheet into the bag and
expand it. It allows you to fill the bag with items that would punch
holes in the bag. Once loaded there are two hand hold cutouts for
sliding the insert up and out of the bag. You will be amazed how much
you can put in the bags using these inserts….

I also use an extendable pruner that not only cuts the cane off but grips it so it doesn't fall to the ground. You just squeeze the handle, keep it squeezed, and then let it drop into your container. Not cheap but sure beats bending over.....

I think I'm seeing a shredder in my future. Have all ready spent too much on roses. The yard should be close to filled up after this year. Should be doable next season. Do gardens ever really get to full to add more?

Love the shredders! Not sure I'd want to use my rose shreds around the bushes tho. Don't wanna spread more B/S and mildew. I suppose if I let it compost in a pile for a yr or so, maybe that would work ok. Luckily, we have mandatory recycling and green waste pickups. Everybody has two 94 gal green waste cans that get picked up every other week. I pay extra to have a third can due to all the cuttings and pine needles. I just haul a smaller plastic trash can around when I'm pruning and then go dump it into the green waste cans. Before they went to the mandatory recycling, my husband used to haul it to the dump every so often. Ya know... the dang pine needles are worse than the rose cuttings. I bet I fill up 40 cans a yr, just in pine needles. I wonder if those chippers would cut them up? Once they do decompose, they make pretty decent mulch. But when they're fresh, they're a big messy, slippery carpet, that on my sloped property can be dangerous. And the pine cones?! OMG, I've almost biffed it many times stepping on those dang things!