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There’s no escape - it’s time to prune the roses

The most obvious reasons are to maintain a compact specific or uniform height and to remove dead, damaged or diseased wood. But, most importantly, it is to remove weak or exhausted growth and encourage development of strong, young canes in order to obtain better, healthier blooms.

The age-old idea of cutting roses back to a certain, fixed, even height is now long gone. Although it’s true that the bigger the bush and the more growth, the more numerous the flowers will be, it’s usually considered of greater importance to produce high quality flowers on strong stems, even though it may mean less flowers.

Pruning is usually to be taken care of by the end of July when roses are at the height of dormancy to avoid removing young growth at their peak, but this year, that looks to be a little later than usual. By removing older or weakened wood, the full sap flow is reserved for the more useful, vigorous, flower-producing growth.

Aim to have enough canes, preferably evenly spaced apart, and not more than two years old, left on the bush. Enough should be retained to provide the lateral growth that will bear the flowers.

Eliminate crowding

Wherever possible, remove any crowded or crossed stems and try to keep the centre of the bush clear. Resultant growth will benefit, and besides, no clear-thinking person would choose to thrust their hand into the depths of a feisty rose bush.

Use only sharp secateurs to avoid bruising the wood or leaving ragged edges to the cut. If your pruners do leave a rough edge, to minimise fungal damage use a boxcutter or some other razor-sharp knife to tidy up. It’s also a wise move to sterilise your pruners between bushes, to minimise cross infection, by dipping them into a container of household steriliser after each bush.

Cut back each cane to 20 or 30cm above the old bud union, at a distance of about a centimetre above a prominent bud (or eye) if possible, selecting a bud that points away from the centre of the bush.

Make the cut sloping downwards, away from the bud.

After pruning, paint the wood, either with a paste made of copper oxychloride and water or with a commercially prepared pruning paint. Clean up and burn the prunings and rake up any leaves.

Spray the plants with a winter spraying oil, followed by a spraying of copperbased fungicide a week later.

The quality of the resultant blooms will assure you that all the time and effort spent in caring for your rose bushes is well worth while.

N.B. Your climbing roses should be treated in much the same manner, except that as in the case of espaliered fruit trees, you must develop and retain a framework of older wood from which the new flowering growth will develop. Weeping roses are different again and I will elaborate more fully in the next issue.

A pair of lions - leonotis leonurus and l.leonurus alba

Ironically these colourful members of the lamiaceae plant clan, carrying the common names, lion’s paw and lion’s tail, really do come from Africa. And they are closely related to such plants as mint, sage, lavender, and believe it or not the, flamboyant, multicoloured coleus.

Leonotis are fast growing, to about one and a half metres in height, and respond favourably to being kept tidy, with a hard cutting back in winter to bring forth vigorous new growth and a burst of spring flowers.

Sun loving, they are moderately frost resistant, preferring a little protection in winter and well drained soil. Got a gardening query? Email glenzgarden@gmail.com