Author Topic: Looking after roses  (Read 2743 times)

Looking after roses
« on: 07 July, 2008, 11:18:31 am »


I was bought a rose bush. It's actually the first time anyone has bought me something (well, apart from when a girl I was keen on bought me a cactus. Maybe she was trying to tell me something).

So far, it's grown without intervention, producing pretty red roses.

But it looks a bit sad atm. The flowers are dying back, and some of the stems are spotty with black. Should I be cutting it back or something?  I've pulled off the dead flowers.
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iakobski

Re: Looking after roses
« Reply #1 on: 07 July, 2008, 11:58:59 am »
When you take off the dead flowers, you need to take off the "dead head" as well, the bulbous bit on the end of the stem. If it's a modern variety this will probably help it to go on and produce more flowers (not necessarily, depends on variety).

It's not the right time of year for pruning, do that in the winter.

There is a lot of rubbish written about pruning: exact time of year, angle of cut, position of cut, etc. Someone did some good trials a few years ago and the results were just as good as the "correct" method when they took a pair of shears and hacked them back. Assuming your rose is not climbing or a standard (tall stem with ball of growth at the top) then sometime between Oct and Feb you should cut it back really hard. You then get a load of strong growth next year and it doesn't spread all over the place.

Re: Looking after roses
« Reply #2 on: 07 July, 2008, 12:05:38 pm »
Ta, will do that.

what about the black spots? Cut off those stems in Oct?
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Re: Looking after roses
« Reply #3 on: 07 July, 2008, 12:11:05 pm »
Sounds like your rose has got black spot, usually gotten from getting the leaves wet whilst watering.

this can be treated with a propriatary spray (available from all garden centres) and making sure you only water the roots.

The trials that A random One talks of were carried out the RHS at Wisley, they had two beds, one they pruned the accepted conventional way and the other was done with a hedge trimmer.  There was no perceived difference in the health of either.

EDIT: It was the Royal National Rose Society, not RHS that did the trial, BBC - Radio 4 - Gardeners' Question Time - Factsheets - 11 August 2002
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Re: Looking after roses
« Reply #4 on: 07 July, 2008, 04:14:10 pm »
I once heard the advice to get your worst enemy to prune your roses. In other words, hard pruning will bring the best show of flowers.