If you're looking for tidier-looking plants with healthy blooms, learning how to deadhead and prune your roses is important. Home gardeners who grow modern roses, including the relatively new shrub or landscape rose bushes, should consider these techniques essential to the plant's care. Before making any snips to your plant, though, it's important to consider the type of rose, how it blooms, and the time of season. Here's what you need to know to encourage blooms on your roses.
What's the Difference Between Deadheading and Pruning Roses?Deadheading is done in the first year, after the plant starts flowering. Pruning is done once the plants are established, usually after the second year. The difference between the two is that the annual pruning is a more drastic removal of canes while deadheading removes old rose blossoms any time in the growing season.
What is Pruning?Pruning maintains the plant’s shape and encourages new growth, thus more flowers. Roses like to be pruned; they need to have their dead canes removed. Typically, this is done when the plant is dormant, about 6 to 8 weeks before the average last frost or when the forsythia blooms. If gardeners forget or were not able to prune and the plant is starting to leaf out, they should prune anyway. In the deep South, roses may be flourishing and blooming in the winter and be “dormant” in the summer’s heat, so the best time to prune would be in the summer. The shrub or landscape rose bushes can be pruned a little later, when the new growth is visible in late spring.
What is Deadheading?Deadheading—removing spent blossoms—encourages more blooms and results in a more attractive shrub. Some gardeners don’t want to deadhead because they want the resulting fruit, called
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