Hi again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm and today I'm starting my rose pruning for the
season starting with this bad boy behind me - this is 'Rose de Rescht' which I've allowed to grow up a
little bit too congested a little bit too tall so i'll be thinning this one out and bringing
it down a little bit today and i thought some of you might want to come along and join me
to pick up some tips but before that i wanted to just quickly answer the question because everybody
talks about rose pruning so much at this time of year coming out of winter I guess the question
you want to ask is: should you routinely prune all of your roses every year at the end of winter
and the answer to that question is of course: No. If you have a newly established rose if
it's just gone into the ground last year or the last couple of years and i'll show you
some examples from footage here of some plants that were recently transplanted they don't need
it they're small enough they're open enough they don't require any additional pruning it's really
that when you get well established roses that put on a fair amount of growth every year that if you
want to do a little bit of thinning out to get some congestion out of the center and if they're
vigorously growing and they're putting on a little too much height then they can benefit from
pruning at this time of year when i say this time of year i do mean late winter early spring when
the greatest risk of winter cold damage is past of course if you live in a climate that has not
such a harsh winter then you can feel free to do your pruning all the way through the cool season
if you are if you don't have time this time of year don't worry this is just the front edge of
that growing season oftentimes i will let my roses grow through all the way through their
first flush of blooms for the season and then take them down later in may or june if i have to
just so long as i don't leave the pruning too late in the year i shouldn't expect any damage from it
you could make the case that i shouldn't start a rose pruning tutorial looking at
such an intimidating rose this is six feet tall roughly about five feet wide
and it is a tangled mass of mostly vertical stems that have grown into each other and
they're crossing badly so why do i was such a such an example well honestly it's because
i think this is where people get hung up on rose pruning they come across a rose that
looks too difficult doesn't easily conform to those rules those easy rules of pruning roses
so they give up on it so i want to show you how i tackle such an overgrown rose a lot of those rules
are focused on getting rid of the spent flowers the crossing stems the dead disease damaged
stuff at the top of the rose and you could spend a lot of time futzing around at the top of the rows
getting rid of that growth but the truth is this thing is going to require a more substantial prune
if somebody told me right now i want to take a chainsaw and take it halfway
down straight away i wouldn't even argue with them that won't be in my approach because i don't like
chainsaw cuts they're a little too ragged for for my liking but in this case yeah i'm going
to be targeting a height on this thing around three feet and i'm going to be looking to thin
all of that growth at the bottom by taking out some of the oldest crustiest branches
and preferring some of the newer more vigorously growing canes when i do that that will get rid of
a lot of what's at the top anyway i'm going to start by clearing out some around the base here
and some of these lower branches just so i can see things a little bit better this won't take long
and while i'm down there grabbing at spiny things it's a good time to mention
that leather gloves are my choice to protect my hands i get good flexibility in them they hold up
really well and they're not too expensive
so nothing tricky about those cuts at all i just used regular pair of hand pruners
falco was the brand this is just a carbide sharpener that i used
to put a sharp edge on the blade before i got started it just takes a couple of strokes then
you're ready to go and you do start with a clean blade i've mentioned this before people always
ask what do you clean it with i used to give a more complicated answer now i just say use lysol
that's fine and it won't rest your blades all right i'm ready to go on to the next step here
i'm going to start identifying and removing some of the larger older branches on this
from the base so that it actually does start to remove some of that bulk up top as well
and for this step i'll be using loppers most likely because they'll get an easier cut
once i've identified a stem or a branch that i want to thin out
i try to make the cut as low down on the base of the rose as i can manage
i could make the cut a little bit higher and that might make it easier to get this the branch
out but then i feel like i'd be doubling up the work because i'd have to make the cut twice
once higher on the stem and then later on lower to clean out the center of the rose now how you
make the choice of which stems to prefer to leave in and which ones you don't is just an eyeball
thing you're trying to get a framework of of stems that have a little bit of space in between them
all things being equal you choose to leave the ones that are younger and healthier and better
looking and so you can assess the overall health of the of the stem top to
bottom but you don't have to go into great detail with this as long as you choose a viable stem in
an area and try to remove the competing stems from around it you'll do just fine
just pulled this one off i don't know if you'll be able to see from that distance but that brown
across the base there that dark stem those dark streaks up here just indicate to me that this is
a little bit older growth on the rose so taking some older congested growth out and allowing room
for the newer fresher stems to come in is something that i'm looking to do with this prune
starting to see some space forming in the middle of the rose here and
one other note is that i took the opportunity to take a branch or two off of that fig to the right
and i also have a unanimous right behind it that we're starting to crowd the rows
so while you're pruning the rose might be a good time to prune its neighbors too
and now that i've got the majority of the big stuff out i'm going back to the hand pruners and
i'm going to take this thing down to a maximum of about this height here which would put it at about
three three and a half feet and that will give me
a good view of anything else i have to do before i call this finished
all right so that's gotten me down to my overall shape and size i'm gonna go handheld now bring
you in closer to the shrub just so you can see the final touches and the final decision making
you can see that initial pruning there which took me all of oh what five to 10 minutes
really achieved most of the goals that i have for pruning this shrub it's a far more manageable
height and shape and a lot of that congestion is out of the center of the shrub and that
congestion matters because the less air movement you have in the center of your shrub the longer
it holds moisture against its foliage and the more likely it is to pick up things like black spot or
powdery mildew or any other foliar type disease okay so now that we've gotten into that stage
you can see there's plenty of room now to choose to clean it up even further if you'd like this
part is optional you can go back in and start looking for the little nubs that are left behind
if you look up close you'll definitely be able to find some stems that are blackened or should
be nipped off some old spent flowers some of the finer details that if you really wanted to
go after it you could clean all of the little details out you could certainly clean up around
the bottom center of the shrub a little bit more and get rid of some of the old nubs of old growth
if you see any dead stuff still in there i think center of screen there you'll see a light brown
stem that i'll probably nip out afterwards just to clean it up but all of that stuff is rather
optional you're going to get the benefits of pruning even with just a rough job like this
and since i've got your handheld here just a very quick aside for those people who propagate roses
this is an own root sucker from the rose rose direct is an sort of a gallica hybrid so it does
suckering and if you had a mind to do so you could just follow that sucker back down into the ground
find a spot where it is rooted cut it off from the main plant and you will have a brand new
shrub rose you give away to friends or sell or do whatever you please with it well if you
have time for one more example i'm gonna do a floribunda distant drums here you can see that
i didn't keep up with deadheading last year so it has a lot of spent hips on it uh and it has
some broken branches dead disease stuff but the process is exactly the same just have a look
just like i did with the previous example i'm going to start down low and in the center of
the rows trying to hit those stems that are in the poorest condition and clear them out and thin them
out from the base of the rose once i've done that all the way around the rows and i've gotten some
space between the main stems then i can choose a height and then i can prune straight across
trying to get the height and shape that i'm looking for for the season
thanks so much for joining me as i prune the first couple of roses of my season i'll continue to make
videos of these whenever i come to a new class or style of rose that i think you should learn
about pruning things like the shrub roses the ramblers maybe some of the pillars that i'll be
training this year if you have any questions or comments about any specific kinds of rose
pruning please drop those down in the comments below the video and thanks again for watching