My first attempt at pruning a neglected rambler.
About 10-15 years ago we had to take down a huge 80ft tall Scarlet Oak tree on our side lot line, which had blocked the view of our neighbor's house. So, we had the stump left about 5 ft high, and added a "moon gate arbor" from Kinsman, and my DH made a raised bed around the stump. We planted a rooted cutting of a very old 'Apple Blossom' rambler which has been growing in a different place in our garden for only the Lord knows how long. (It grows up an old flowering crab apple tree, and seems to be happy). The Apple Blossom rose grew all over the arbor, and blocked the sight of the house next door, and was lovely every Spring, and green the rest of the year.
I confess that we have not done anything for it except give it water in our totally rainless Summer and some food once a year since we planted it. Two weeks ago, after some hot weather (for here - high temp 85 degrees F) I suddenly noticed that about half of the canes were suddenly sporting masses of dead leaves. So, I watered it a lot in case that was the problem, and looked up ramblers, to find that I was supposed to have pruned it annually. Oops. I found the advice below about renovating overgrown ramblers from the Royal Horticultural Society. Other than ignoring the timing of pruning & feeding to take into account what I know works here (Fall into early Winter is a second, or you could say, a first, Spring here, when all new plantings are done, and the rains return after a normal 6 month absolute drought, and the fruit trees start blooming, etc.) my DH and I have tried to follow these recommendations. Since we had no idea what we were doing, it took us 3 days of working about 2 hours at a time (to avoid the heat after about 10AM) to finish.
Below, in order, are photos of AB in the Spring of 2023 - when we actually got around to dealing with it, it was amazing how long and complicated the canes and their offshoots had gotten, and how far they had penetrated into the nearby foliage of other plants. Then is a photo of it after we were finished pruning out the old canes, and tying up the ones we left. The last ones are of the base of the rose - my DH did a good job IMO of removing the stumps from the base of the rose.
Well, Houzz is being obnoxious about letting me post photos, so I am going to try and put them in a Comment.
Jackie
Comments (11)
9 months agoRelated Discussions
Neglected Schefflera in need of some help (prune/repot/etc)
Comments (30)Hello again everyone, I have completed my repotting and would like to share a couple pictures. Here's a pic of the roots; as you can see the spiraling of the roots had this guy very pot bound (I was shocked to see so few roots overall however): Here's the finished plant: So I removed the plant from it's old pot and got to chopsticking. The dirt removed easily and was definitely very powdery (seemed like pretty much 100% peat moss and very fine). After working all of the old substrate out I washed the roots gently to remove anything trapped. Then I trimmed the roots, and applied a thin coat of rooting hormone to the cut root ends. I mixed a 25/75 orchid mix/ OilDri substrate, put a thin layer of this in the pot, made a little mound of substrate at the center (after finishing I wish I would have made it a bit higher in the center), and then proceeded to add the rest and work it around well. Then I gently submerged the pot in water for 10-15 minutes, then let it drain. As you can see in the final pic I have a weight on the opposite side that the plant is leaning. While it wasn't going to fall on it's own, I decided that since I didn't anchor the plant I'll just keep a bit of weight on this side for a couple weeks until I'm confident new roots have formed to firmly hold the plant. I hadn't originally planned to have the plant tilted, but the combination of that and my pruning has it a bit less balanced than I would like. In the future I would have anchored the roots, but live and learn. :) Thanks again everyone for your help and advice, and I'll report back to this post in a couple of weeks, hopefully with good results and 3 new plants to be trained as actual bonsai from the cuttings!...See MorePruning and Training Ramblers
Comments (14)Let's see how well I can answer these questions without going on TOO long. Pruners? My favorite one are Felco #6, which were given to me as a gift. They're comfortable, easy to maintain and sharpen, and I can cut just about anything with them. One thing I failed to mention is the importance of a good pair of gloves. My best ones for pruning like this are made of deerskin ... they are soft and flexible and tough as any gloves out there. Rarely does a thorn make it through a good pair of deerskin gloves. Old wood, for me, is defined as the canes that grew last year or before. Sherry, your Francois Juranville was probably too young to have much old wood last spring. If he were mine, I would let the portion that goes over the arch and into the tree do whatever it wants to do. (That's what I'm planning to do with my American Pillar) Any parts that you want to keep within reach can be trained my way. Jeri, feel free to link to any of my blog posts that you think will be of interest to HRG readers. I'm flattered. Melissa, Leontine Gervais is probably my favorite rambler. Her lax canes are a dream to train, and she rewards the care by blooming her butt off in spring. Sammy, any climber can be pruned using my principles. All it really involves is the removal of old or bloomed out wood and arranging what's left. Don't be afraid to cut out a cane to open up space for new growth. I do the same thing for the climbers on my Arcade, except I spiral the remaining canes upward around the posts. I'm still working out a system that works for me to train roses to an arbor or an arch. I mostly just put the canes wherever, and hope for the best. (With your no-spray garden, you MUST grow ramblers!!!) buford, I've seen photos of your Teasing Georgia, and I would be inclined to keep it to a limited number of relatively new canes to help reduce the mass. Years ago, my husband bought me a Max Tapener (a vineyard tool) to use to attach rose canes to their support. It allows me to work by myself and makes very short work of tying climbers. I linked below to a post where I demonstrated how to use it. I used jute twine before this. The twine is natural, and it will disintegrate in a year or two ... just about the time you'll need to take the rose down and tidy it up. maureen, City of York on an arbor?? Wow! That's going to take some work. With your Veilchenblau, you can do what Robert does with his Cl. Cecile Brunner, which kept blowing off the roof of his chicken house. He keeps it up there by tying the canes to cinderblocks on the roof. It hasn't blown off since. elemire, setigeras are the focus of my newest interest, and I grow them in a different part of the garden. I grow Arcata Pink Globe, Himmelsauge, and Geschwind's Nordlandrose (which are good here). I thought I had Baltimore Belle, but it turned out to be identical to my Arcata Pink Globe. Errinnerung an Brod hasn't done well, and I will probably remove it this summer, along with a few other Geschwind roses. I am very excited to grow a Pennsylvania-found setigera that was given to me by a friend this spring. Most setigeras are American roses, and they are underappreciated and disappearing. My disappointing Geschwind roses will be replaced on their fence with setigeras. All of my ramblers would probably be ground cover if I let them. Each of the ramblers has had basal canes crawl across the bed and out to the grass beyond, only to be chewed off by the lawn mower. Paul Lede, Cl., is beautiful when in bloom. My plant had a difficult time this past summer, with a combination of heat, drought, and fungus that made it practically leafless by mid-summer (I wasn't too diligent with my fungicide.) Despite this, I got a really nice repeat bloom from him in September and October. In the part of two days that I spent pruning, The only roses I have left to do now are Paul Transon, American Pillar, and Silver Moon. A friend was here while I was working on Alberic Barbier, and he and I worked on opposite sides of the fence, which cut the time we spent on this rose at least in half. It was great to have a trained eye to assist with this, because we communicated well and AB looks great! My goal with this is to convince rose growers that ramblers aren't nearly as scary as they imagine them to be ... and the rewards of growing them are beyond compare. Whew. Connie Here is a link that might be useful: Post on the tool I use to attach roses to structure...See MorePruning and Re-potting a Neglected Baby Jade
Comments (4)It looks like it's been getting enough light, whether it has been getting fertilizer is secondary right now. That leaves us with water and soil, and they very much go together. I cannot see the soil, but that is what I zero in on. It looks healthy enough to handle a repot into some fresh, quick-draining soil so from what I can see that is where I would start. Perhaps minimal pruning right now, enough so that you can get your hands in there to do the work. Once repotted, give it healthy amounts of food, light, water and temperature until Spring. At that time, you can prune for shaping. When you repot, if it looks marvelously healthy you could consider a harder prune right away. The key will be firm trunks and lots of healthy roots. You can search for images on google to see how crassula ovata grows in nature, but if you like the jungle look I'm sure it will comply to a degree. Btw, the term baby jade(I assume your using that term because it's small) was mistakenly given to portulacaria afra as a nickname, a similar plant in similar habitat. ez...See MorePruning crossing canes in a rambler/climber?
Comments (7)Crossing growth on climbers and ramblers is not such a big deal -- in fact, when training a climber or rambler around a pillar or post, one often begins by securing strong growth to the structure, then tucking the rest back into itself. The result is LOTS of crossed stems. My 'Baltimore Belle' has only a few stout climbing canes so far, but sprouted lots of laterals last year. When they started looking too floppy, I wove them around the trunk of the dying Japanese maple it's climbing, tucking them behind growth already going vertical. :-) ~Christopher P.S. Your rose is still a baby, and what you see are its "baby canes". Their job is to feed the roots, and eventually you'll start getting "climbing canes". Eventually, you'll find yourself looking at those original "baby canes" as something in the way, and will likely want to remove them. That's what I do -- once they've done their job, they're more in the way than anything. So don't worry about crossing stems on something you'll likely remove in a year or two, anyway....See More
9 months ago
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Wow - after dealing with one rambler, I can hardly imagine dealing with several at once. "Stabby" is a good word - the thorns on ours were not huge, but curved and very very sharp, and of course the canes are flexible and love to whip around. They kept grabbing my hat off of my head, and even though I was wearing extra heavy gardening denim, they ripped holes in it. After some consideration, I am not surprised that your roses rebounded quickly - that is not something I am worried about.
Rootstock is another matter - every single rose in my garden is on its own roots, except perhaps for some ancient ones planted by my DH's ancestors. I really think all of those have gone own root by now, as I have not seen a root sucker coming up anywhere for decades. I won't plant a rose unless I can get it own root, and anyway most of the roses I plant are cuttings I rooted myself. Life is way too short to keep having to deal with (here anyway) zillions of Dr. Huey plants, which in our climate tend to be way more energetic than the scions. I do remember some places where the scion was gone, it took us 2-3 tries to dig up Dr. Huey until it stopped coming up again.
Of course, when an emerging rootstock turned out NOT to be Dr. Huey, I aways waited for it to bloom to see if I liked it - Here is my favorite, 'de la Grifferaie (1845) - the rose tree it killed was yellow, and boring, so I was fascinated when dlG came up, a mystery to me, but I could tell by the leaves it was something special. So much that I waited through 4 Springs with no blooms, until it did this on the Fifth one, and continues to do that every Spring ever since. Fabulous strong fragrance, too, and no disease whatever.
Jackie - 8 months ago
- 8 months ago
- 8 months ago
jacqueline9CAOriginal Author