by Nancy Wilson, U. C. Master Gardener
The holidays and many good meals are under our belts. Now our attention may be turning to exercise. Pruning could be the perfect winter fitness routine for you and your roses.
We have had some frost which signals plants to go dormant, so your roses are ready to be pruned. January and February are the months for pruning in Napa County. Although many face this task with trepidation, a few suggestions can help you do the job with confidence.
The first thing to do is to gather your tools: pruning shears, loppers, hand saw, leather gloves, protective clothing, a ladder and a tarp. Make sure your tools are clean and sharp. Use a sand block or soapy water and a scour pad to remove rust and plant sap from the blades. Use a sharpening stone to get a good edge on the blades; then spray with Lysol to disinfect. Wipe everything dry and give a spray of WD-40. You are ready to prune.
Winter pruning regenerates roses for a burst of spring growth. You want to focus the plant's energy into the strongest canes and branches to increase the potential for flowers. You want to get rid of any sources of potential disease and pest infestation.
Pruning is the single most important thing you will do all year in your rose maintenance program. The few cardinal rules about pruning come from observation and experience, not books or experts.
For hybrid tea roses, floribundas, grandifloras and most shrub roses, you will only remove about one-third of the growth. (You may not even remove that much if your bush is very young and tender.) Removing more would rob the plant of stored energy for growth and bloom.
Exceptions to this rule include removing all dead or diseased wood and any crossing branches. These should be removed to the graft union or to the nearest cane. All other branches should be cut straight across at a right angle, about a quarter-inch above a bud eye. You do not need to dip your cutting blades in disinfectant, nor should you use glue or any other substance to seal the cuts. The cuts will heal by themselves.
Once your rose bushes are pruned, strip all remaining leaves, spent flowers and hips from the bush. Clean up all debris under and around the bushes and take everything away to your garden waste bin or the dump. Do not compost rose cuttings.
You may decide to spray the roses and surrounding soil with dormant oil combined with a copper-based fungicide. This spray will kill overwintering fungus spores and insect egg cases. Generally, cleanliness will be enough to keep your garden healthy without spraying.
If you have climbers, let the terminal shoots grow for three years, training and tying them onto your fence or trellis. To encourage abundant flowering, prune back the lateral branches, leaving three to five bud eyes. You can always remove a cane if you need to keep the plant in shape and encourage renewed growth. However, the more growth on a climber, the more flowers you will get.
If you have old garden roses that bloom once in the spring or early summer, wait until after they bloom to shape the bushes. Again, reduce the branches by one third, and only this much if they threaten to overtake their allotted space.
Planting the right rose in the right spot will reduce the amount of pruning you face each year, and will provide you with fabulous bloom. It takes lots of greenery to produce beautiful flowers, and flowers are the point of growing roses.
Napa County Master Gardeners are presenting two free public pruning workshops in January. If you would like to polish your pruning skills, please join us for this demonstration and hands-on experience of the tools and techniques use for rose pruning. Both workshops cover the same information.
The first workshop will be January 8, from 10 a.m. to noon, at the Mount St. Helena Golf Course Clubhouse, Napa County Fairgrounds, 1435 N. Oak Street, Gate 5 off Grant Street, Calistoga. The second workshop will be January 15, 10 a.m. to noon, John Dallas' Rose Garden, 1020 Mt. George Avenue, Napa. In the event of rain, the January 15 workshop will be postponed to January 22.