Let's Grow Stuff

- Greetings from the garden!

And welcome back to a new season of Let's Grow Stuff.

You know, it wouldn't be a new season of Let's Grow Stuff if I didn't have different hair.

And so, today, we are tackling a little bit of a thorny subject.

Pruning an overgrown rose.

Let's get to it.

Regular pruning of your roses, usually every one to two years, is important to encourage fresh, vigorous, and healthy growth, which, of course, leads to more flowers.

But it's also important to help keep your rose in check because they can ramble and scramble with abandon.

Removing excess material will also help light reach the inside of the plant.

And this increases airflow, which is helpful for minimizing the chance of pests and disease.

It's important to finish pruning before the plant breaks dormancy and begins to grow again for the year, which can happen quite quickly once temperatures begin to warm up in spring.

If you notice leaves beginning to emerge, it's best to wait until next season to prune.

Today, we're tackling this rose, which hasn't been pruned in several years, so it needs quite a bit of TLC.

Tools we'll need before we get started.

First, some kind of eye protection, some nice, thick gloves for handling the thorny rose bushes, alcohol for disinfecting our pruners, and nice sharp pruners themselves.

Before we dive in, it helps to make a game plan.

First, we want to look for any old or damaged wood, which you can identify by its dull or gray coloring, compared to younger wood, which is usually bright green, smooth, and shiny.

We also want to look for any damaged or hollow stems, as these can lead to more serious issues.

So in the case of this particular rose, we're going to come right at it, right from the base and through here, because there's no branches in our way.

So it's nice and easy access.

So, now that we have some of these really easy wins out of the way, we can see a bit better of what we're working with.

So first, I'm actually going to take out this one, even though it's a young, green, nice shoot.

Notice we have this damage right here.

So, this is something where pests and disease can come in and become an issue.

So, I'll start by making the cut down here and then take out the remainder of it in pieces.

Another helpful tip: as you might be noticing, I'm essentially using my pruners almost like tweezers.

So every time I make a cut, I grab onto the rose gently, not enough to actually cut through it, and then use that to pull it out of the plant so that I don't risk, even though I have thick gloves, I'm not risking the thorns going through my gloves.

So next up, I'm going to take some of the top growth off of this bigger cane in through here.

And the reason I'm not going to take everything is that it still has lots of young, green shoots coming off here near the base, but things up here near the top are not looking so hot.

And I can tell because, again, this bark has a lot of sort of gray and silver to it, which means it's mostly dead or all dead.

So by removing this, I can increase airflow and help the plant put energy back into these younger shoots for more flowers.

So, at this point, we've taken out a decent amount of the dead and damaged pieces, but we haven't really started working on shaping or forming the good pieces that can stay.

From here, we're going to focus on debulking this plant.

So, part of that involves removing last year's spent flowers, but also thinking ahead to the season to come and making sure that there's easy airflow and good light access all the way to the base of the plant.

So when it comes to removing last year's spent flowers, start by finding those old blooms and then going back down the stem, usually about three to four inches, until you find one of these adorable little red nubbins.

This is a dormant bud that will produce leaves and flowers this year.

You'll want to cut right above that bud, and that'll force the plant to put all of its energy into that point right there, producing nice big flowers and healthy growth.

As you can see, rose stems are wild and irregular.

And as we try and move and cut these pieces, they're getting caught together on each other and sort of flailing about.

Cutting your stems into smaller lengths will make it much easier and safer to dispose of this material.

When I add them to my compost, I'm going to keep them separate just so that I don't reach in to grab a pile of fresh compost and accidentally nick a rose thorn in the process.

Well, as you can see, this rose looks quite different.

We've removed quite a bit of material, but that's a good thing.

And we're left with this wonderful, nice, young, fresh, green growth that will produce lots of healthy, fresh flowers for us this year.

We also are able to get much more light into the center of the plant, which will encourage fresh growth for years to come.

Now, also, at this moment, it's a lot easier to actually get here at the base of the plant compared to when we started.

So, this is a great time to feed our rose heading into spring with some compost, and this will help it to, again, grow healthy and produce lots of great flowers.

And so, what we're going to do is dump compost right around the base, about 12 to 18 inches out from the plant and about one inch deep.

Well, there you have it.

We have given this rose bush some much-needed TLC, and we can't wait to see what it will do for us later in the year.

Now, don't forget, there is so much more to learn online at letsgrowstuff.org.

There you'll find more videos, tips, tricks, and a blog to help you grow a better garden.

So until next time, happy gardening!

- Funding for Let's Grow Stuff is provided by the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.