Ceae's Rose Tree
Rosa

I wasn’t sure if I should have let the hips form or prune and try for a thrid bloom?

Since it appears to take about a month between blooms, I decided to prune, assuming that the next round of flowers should have come and gone by mid September, giving the tree another month before frost.

The lopsided shape gets a little more even with each cutting.

I’m guessing on the date of the second bloom -

I deadheaded my rose standard shortly after I brought it home, with really not much of clue as to what I was doing. Sure, I read lots of articles and books, but that didn’t necessary mean that I knew how to do it. What is it about roses that makes one so apprehensive. If it were any other plant in my garden, I would have done a quick check to make sure I wasn’t pruning at the ‘wrong’ time (and perhaps proceeded even if it was) and then instinctively chopped away.

In addition to taking off the dead flowers I took my time and tried to make cuts that would balance out, to some degree, its misshapen half circle of foliage, because the more I looked at it, the more its deformed half-ball annoyed me.

New growth has started, and I’m so please that most of the new shoots are heading into the bare side, and after having pruned once, I’m confident that I can make additional cuts to fix the rest. While checking on the new growth, which is coloured a wonderful red, I noticed a few new tiny buds!

Disclaimer: I admittedly know nothing at all about roses, not the slightest … but I am determined to make my new rose standard tree not only live but thrive.

The rose tree I purchased looks very healthy, nice green leaves, flowers and buds, but it has not been pruned with any care what so ever so it’s a very lopsided piece of work. It looks to me like there are 3 grafts attached to the stem, all of which are growing in what I can only summarize as the three bears. Papa is mammoth … lots of canes (is that what you call a rose stem?) Mama is medium sized and Baby is really puny. I believe that come next spring I’ll be pruning all three down to next to nothing so I’m not going to worry too much about the shape right now … for now I just want to keep the darn thing alive and flowering.

The first and most obvious thing that needs to be done is deadhead, so that’s today’s ‘opportunity’. (Don Shore of the Davis Garden Show & Beyond podcast always refers to garden tasks, not as ‘work’ or ‘jobs’, but opportunities … I love that!)

We deadhead roses for the same reason we deadhead any other flower:
a) it looks better and
b) it encourages repeat bloomers to produce more flowers.

EXCEPT …if you have a variety (most do) that produce ‘hips’. Hips are ornament seed capsules, so if you have a rose that produced hips and you want to have hips then you leave the late summer crop on the shrub.

There seems to be two trains of thought on how to deadhead spent flowers

With most roses the compound leaves closest to the flower have only three leaves, traditional practice is to find the next five leaflet and to cut 1/4” above the first outward facing bud on a 45angle.

New wisdom suggests that cutting so far down is not necessary; it’s better to preserve the leaves (to encourage photosynthesis) and simply snip the bud off the top.

I’m going to try both methods. On ‘papa’ I’ll deadhead in the traditional fashion but on Mama and Baby I’ll deadhead just underneath the flowers.

In the meantime if any of you rose experts out there have a preferred method, please let me which you do and why.