A Rose By Any Other Name… Will Still Have Thorns 
2/16/2010 - Pruning Roses:
Grab your leather gloves, some band-aids, and a tube of Neosporin. You’re going to make it out alive, but chances are: you’re going to be scratched up pretty good. Pruning roses can be a time consuming, challenging, and potentially painful process. The way you prune your roses will vary depending on that type of roses you have. If you’ve got your garden-variety shrub rose, like the wonderful Knock Out, they’re not going to be the least bit picky about how they’re pruned. You could run them over with your truck and come spring they’ll come right back. (This is not recommended.) Other varieties, such as Hybrid Tea roses, will be picky. These instructions will suit hybrid teas, Knockouts and most other roses just fine.
Technically you don’t have to prune them: you can let them get as big and as wild and wooly as you like! Pruning does have benefits though: we have a group of red Knock Outs here on the CTC, North Metro Campus that is every bit of 8 feet tall! Sure they’re beautiful when they bloom, but they’re kind of monstrous the rest of the year. Aside from maintaining a pleasing and manageable size, pruning encourages better blooming. Roses bloom on new growth; and pruning encourages growth.
Basically when pruning roses, your objective is to establish a structure for new growth to come out on in the spring. You should prune your roses back to about 12-18” from the ground. (If you’ve got a climbing rose, or a rose that only blooms once a year, you need a different set of instructions). You should remove any canes the look diseased or are damaged. Before you start the structural pruning take a time out and think about the growth that will come from the cuts you make. The direction the bud is facing will be the direction of your new growth; you probably won’t be pruning to a branch like you would for normal pruning, but to an OUTWARD facing bud. If you cut to an inward facing bud the new growth is going to head back to the center of the plant- not ideal or pretty. If you just chop haphazardly, and don’t cut near a bud, the wood will die back to the next bud leaving several inches of dead wood which is a haven for disease.
I’ve included some photos of one of my roses I just pruned-February to early March is the perfect time to prune them. There are before and after shots and a photo of how the cuts should look (right). The cut on the left is too far away from the bud- that extra wood will die and be a gateway for pests and disease, the cut in the center is too close to the bud- the cut is so close it has caused structural damage that won’t support a new branch that will come from that bud, and the last one is just right!
During the growing season removing the spent flowers will encourage most varieties of roses to bloom even more!
If you’ve got a climbing rose I suggest you do a bit of reading before you tackle this one, especially if it only blooms once a year. A great resource is Ortho’s All About Roses by Ortho Books and Thomas Cairns, for all roses not just climbers.
Quick note: the title of this article implies that there are no roses without thorns, that isn't exactly true. There are a few of them; Lady Banks climbing rose being the most common in my experience.
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Jessica Logan, Horticulture Technician, Chattahoochee Technical College, North Metro Campus
A unit of the Technical College System of Georgia, Chattahoochee Technical College is the largest technical college in the state with a student population of more than 11,000 students. The college has seven campus locations throughout the counties of Bartow, Cherokee, Cobb, Gilmer, Paulding, and Pickens counties. Chattahoochee Technical College offers over 100 certificate, diploma and associate degree programs through traditional classroom courses as well as online training. The college also provides the community with learning opportunities including customized workforce training, adult literacy and continuing education programs. For more information, visit www.ChattahoocheeTech.edu.
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