Hey again, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm. Today
I want to talk to you about how to prune a tree rose in late winter or early spring
You may also hear of this called a standard rose
So a standard rose or tree rose is a grafted Rose that is grafted on the top rather than the bottom
So I mentioned in my video on own-root roses versus grafted roses
There are some ways that own-root roses will just never compare
This is one of them. On a grafted rose like this one here
it's built to create a certain shape and the shape of a tree Rose is
Something like a lollipop with a stick that comes up from the ground and then this rounded head on it
now the challenge there is of course that
Naturally your Rose is going to want to do something rather different and this is the Rose after a year of growth
You can see that while it initially expanded out
Rounded it now has this tendency to go upwards and create the shape of say an inverted umbrella
It's just gonna keep on growing up on a 45 degree angle and spreading out above there
So your goals for pruning?
This Rose are no different than a goal that you'd have for pruning your shrub roses in the ground
That is you want to eliminate damaged diseased crossing branches
any
Weak or spindly growth and you also want to return it to a pleasing shape and size
The only difference is your standard for what a pleasing shape and size for is for this will be different than what it is
For a rose in the ground. Let me give you some close-ups so I can show you the difference
So here's the base of the tree rose and never you mind the buttercups that are down there
I'll take care of those and I'll follow up here that this is
the uninterrupted
Stem of the rootstock variety and you can see if you look real close there that it has the remnants of what used to be
buds, but those were rubbed off and
made inactive in the process of
Favoring the top stock variety the Scion variety and you can see off on the left here and
To the right then another one to the left and another one to the right. They've grafted in a number of the Scion
Buds that have taken over the of the rows and then directly above that
They terminated the rootstock. So the rootstock is
No longer growing its own
It's sending all its energy from the roots up to the Scion variety
now the goal in pruning this is to eliminate things like
Well, you can see
There I'm gonna see if I can get a better angle that there's some dead wood in there some Brown dead wood
also, obviously, I've left a number of
old leaves and
elongated shoots and weak leaves and inside of here you
May be even able to spot a couple of places
Where the stems are crossing and just getting in each other's way. So
I'm gonna set the camera on a tripod and show you how I quickly eliminate that and bring it back down to
The size and shape that's going to produce an attractive plant this year
so starting with a clean sharp pair of pruners and
You know never hurts to throw a little extra edge back on there just to make sure that it gives you clean cuts
and
Now I'm just gonna cut away start by cutting away to the general shape that I want because that'll help me to see where everything
needs to go here and
Just taking off some of the really tall stuff that's sort of obstructing my view
Cutting it up high like that has the side advantage that it's taken off
all those old dried leaves for the previous season
I'm going to make sure I get rid of this dead branch here
and
Now I'm going to be more finely attending to shape. So I'm looking for the balance this way
I'm looking for the balance this way
I'm looking for the balance this way and I'm being careful not to let too much of the growth aim directly up or directly out
So I'm trying to make it so that it will
Branch a little bit lower and create a little bit more of that rounded shape and this is going a little too
Upright for me. So I'm gonna go ahead and eliminate that
There we go
Got to choose some winners and some losers here
and
And for this one here, I'm actually going to lop off that whole section there and that should encourage
hopefully this stem to shoot again down lower here and
to fill out this side a little bit more rather than just going straight up and
That
Is almost the whole job
I see a couple of brown nubs here
Then I'm gonna get rid of see that little branch here is moving in this way
And this one is moving into the same area. So I just have to choose a winner
and
that is
generally aside from a tiny bit of cleaning up of round nubs that
Is all I'm going to do to this tree rose on this cutting. Let me show you some other examples
This one you can see got cleaned up a little bit more before the winter
So it's in a generally cleaner state that I can see a little more on it
But I still want to eliminate some of these stems that have gone way out
This one's way out to the right and it's going quite upright. I would favor from these two here
this branch down here, which is more likely to create a little more horizontal and
A little more rounded of a shape. So I'm going to to go ahead and fever that one and in the center here
It's a little congested. So I'm going to eliminate
That one there
Over here bring it right down there
This one here
Take it down a little more
Let's see a dead stem in here. It's brown. So I'm going to eliminate that
Just
Pull that out from the center
Okay, this one here. You can see it's going just about
Straight upwards and that's not what I want. So I'm going to
eliminate that
At a lower down bud
Hopefully you can come up at a better angle this one here
done
I'm there
I'm not paying particular attention to looking for outward facing buds because obviously
This bud could express but also it could go back and express one deeper down so I don't
Spend a lot of time thinking about that. But if I see a nice outward facing bud that I can prune - that's fine -
This one here now in here
It's a little congested down here
So I'm getting rid of that
This and
This
And I'll maybe take these ones that are a little bit thin and bring them back down
So once again, you can see that I've brought it down to a more generally rounded shape
Emphasizing the ones that move outwards rather than the moves that the ones that move upwards
I have one last one to demonstrate on here and maybe you on this one
I'm going to play a little make-believe and pretend like this is one during the middle of the season
So obviously right now you can see the whole structure of it
but during the season these would have been flowers that were just spent and
During the middle of the season you aren't going to do a heavy prune like that. Your whole goal is to get it to
Bloom again rather soon after the first set of blooms. So the only thing you might be doing at that point is of course
Removing the old flowers so deadheading and just a light
Tidying to return it back as best you can
to its rounded shape
so that you can get another flush and another flush of blooms during the season, but that it still doesn't
Start turning
Quite miss shape and are quite out of the shape that you'd expect for a standard rose
So instead of going right back down to a few main branches
for pruning in the middle of the season you just focus on those spent flowers and
Maintaining back a little bit of shape and then let it go again a
quick note on pruning timing
I did the ones outside now at the beginning of February
When the risk of major frost - cold damage is over for my plants. That's a judgment call
I can see though that the flowering shrubs outside like
Forsythia are starting to bud up and bloom so I don't think I'm too far wrong on that one
These ones inside here are in
Containers and I cheated ahead and did those in the middle of winter when I had some time to prune roses
But I think that's okay too because I did it inside of a greenhouse here and they're protected from the risk of subsequent damage
All right
If you have any questions about the pruning of tree roses or standard roses or any Rose questions in general
Drop those below the video. I'll see what I can do to help. Thank you