Well, unfortunately, the average grower today doesn't know that Knockouts are shrub roses. Shrub roses should never be pruned as you would a hybrid tea. If you do so, they will take longer to come back, although they will. Shrubs should always be shaped up to fit their surroundings, They can be cut back one third if they get leggy or way out of hand, BUT PRUNED - NEVER. The phrase, "A rose is a rose is a rose," can often be misleading. All roses cannot be treated alike. You have to consider the type of rose they are and handle them accordingly. A prime example is Mister Lincoln. He does not like to be pruned, but will accept light pruning. To treat him harshly will make comeback time much longer then you anticipate.

When we prune roses, often we only see one side of the bush. I often find that when an apparently healthy cane has died or started to ail after pruning, that when I cut it, I find a problem on the backside that I just didn't see the first time. Now the color black isn't good. When it appears where you've just cut back, you've spread something to that surface. Clean secateurs are a necessity in our zone. (I've seen secateurs in zone 10 that could be called, at best, grotty and the owner never had a problem spreading diseases...probably because the fungi that are problems in zones 6-7 never reach our activation temperatures there.) There is also the black that shows up when a fall cane gets killed by winter. And there're big black splotches that rarely appear midsummer and need to be romoved quickly.

I think Kate misunderstood me. The public looked at me as BAD, NOT you. This happened 15 years ago when I was spraying my roses with chemicals. A neighbor walked to me and said, "why do you even bother growing roses with all these spraying?" It's even worse now, like the protest of bee keepers in France against Bayer. My observations do not apply to anyone else, since it's different with them. If I live in a hot area, I would pile up the bark mulch. But I live in a wet area - where it's more conductive to fungi growth. My defense is with the OGR and the fragrant Austins. These get the bad rap of black-spot prone, poor disease resistance - and less people bother to grow them. I did not want to buy Radio Times and Wise Portia because of the bad reports about their poor disease resistance. They were the only ones available, so I had no choice. Now both I and the bees enjoy these. I have never seen any bees on Knock-outs. We tend to reject certain roses as being disease prone, rather than seeing what we can do to protect them. The fault lies in us, and not in the roses. How did these old fragrant rose flourish in the old days without chemicals? Chemicals get the bad rap. Roses get the bad rap as NEEDING chemicals. Then Knock-outs take over the land. I'm trying to find a way to break this cycle, making roses to be more environmentally friendly. Lainey2: you don't have to dig down to get to the bottom. It's a big pile higher than a house. Actually it's easier to get the bottom, most aged stuff, since it's at your height. You would have to climb up a big mountain to get the fresh manure on top.

HI folks Sorry I've been off posting since last fall - I've missed you all. Partly I've been online so incredibly long hours teaching (university) that I haven't been able to stand being online any more than I have to be. Also, I had a devastating garden-wide bout with Rose Rosette Disease last fall and had to take out about 20 roses and prune ABSOLUTELY everything else to the ground to hope to avoid catastrophic rose disaster. I'll post separately about that, maybe this weekend. Suffice to say for 1000 roses several of which were 12' tall and 10 years old (owning their own dumpsters) this was an exhausting and demoralizing fall. To respond to folks in warmer zones that just got that bizarre freeze all the way to Texas, it doesn't hurt to wait a bit to prune. Dead canes don't cause the rose problems any more than long fingernails cause you problems beyond inconvenience, though if there is downy mildew spotting it's probably good to prune sooner than later. I try to wait till the rose starts leafing out and you can see what is alive at that point. Seil, no I'm not remotely pruning at this point - the post is several years old and was from mid to late March. We're still recovering from the snowiest January ever and one of the coldest Februaries ever. Thank heavens it was in that order! Under the snow it's always 32 degrees however cold the air gets, and we had easily two feet of snow (16" in one snowfall) protecting everything. It's just now starting to melt with temps this week into the 40's all week, but it'll be a long time till I'm out in the garden. Great tips about not pruning once-bloomers Seil. Fortunately those are among the roses that don't take any pruning at all and I almost never see winter damage. Occasionally I'll see a once bloomer shed a cane for some reason, but that can be pruned out after the spring bloom to avoid disrupting the other canes. For the first year ever since growing roses, i have absolutely no rose pruning to do this spring. Everything was pruned to the ground so it's a matter of seeing what resprouts from the ground, and anxiously checking for any signs of RRD and ruthlessly digging out. No second chances or wimping out. Glad this post is helpful! Cynthia