Pruning Your Rose Bushes - Part 2

As I said in the last post, pruning your rose bushes is one of the most important things you can do to promote healthy growth. Without proper pruning, your rose bushes will look pathetic and you will not have as beautiful roses to enjoy.

Here are the remaining tips for how to correctly prune your roses:

•Cut all of the branches that cross or overlap one another because these are often diseased or will become so.

•Keep the remaining five healthy branches. These are often dark green. You will want to make your roses fluted or vases shaped, with an open center, and keep them from touching or overlapping each other.

•Cut your healthy canes to be about one to four feet long, or whatever size that you prefer.

•Cut you roses properly so that they stay healthy. Cut so that the bud is facing outside of the bush and at a 45 degree angle that slopes inward so that you can keep promoting the outward growth.

•You should use bypass pruners that work like scissors and not the anvil types because the anvils crush the stems and make the roses more available to diseases.

In the next post I’ll talk about how to plant potted roses into your garden. Till then, enjoy your garden.

Tags: Rose Gardening