Paul2032 said:In my garden roses are forgiving. I have always accomplished my heavy pruning in the spring but last fall I had some health challenges and had one of my garden helpers take them all down to about 3 feet. They required very little touch-up in the spring and have been gorgeous and I didn't need to look at those ugly tall brown rose bushes all winter.
A few yrs ago, Ludwig's Roses from South Africa came over to the USA to set up shop and began offering their roses. I had a long discussion on the phone and one thing the rep from Ludwig's kept emphasizing is I should prune the roses in late Fall/Autumn. I still remember him repeating this advise over and over again - "try it". I was not given an explanation to the advantage of pruning in late Fall. In the meantime, I was sent Ludwig's "The Yellow", which is doing very well & dismissed his advise. I have read repeatedly that roses should be pruned in the Spring. I have also read that the leaves of rose bushes should be pulled off in late fall/Autumn. That initially sounded crazy to me as it would cause wounds in the plants and a route for fungus infection.
A long time ago, I read about pruning in the late Fall. I came upon this article from the "Rose Magazine" and here is the paragraph that stood out:
"There have been other mistakes and miscalculations in the rose garden. On one hand I have read that roses should not be pruned until early spring. And yet I have seen roses pruned by the end of November. Of course, once-blooming climbers should only be pruned after blooming. This is not the issue here. I only speak of the average roses that need pruning for health and vigor. I found out the hard way that roses are best pruned before winter. One year I had left the roses as were with the intention of a good spring prune in February. I discovered, after nasty wind storms and some heavy snowfalls, that many long and thick canes had broken off at their bases. I realized that had I pruned them down by one third at least before winter, they would not have been damaged so severely."
In the Fall, I have in the past, pruned long canes that might whip around in the wind & any dead wood etc. I do not fertilize in the Fall either. I thought long and hard about the above article and the advise Ludwig's suggested and came to this conclusion. It makes sense to prune in the late Fall to remove any canes that may have canker - that you may not have seen until cutting into the canes and dead wood. Additionally, you would have less of a chance of overwintering fungus because you would be removing most of the culprits and removing most of the infected blackspot leaves. Any remaining leaves could be removed by not pulling them off but, by cutting them off. It seems to me, by pruning earlier you are helping to prevent any overwintering problems, including wind damage. In general, I do not remove more than a 1/4 to 1/3 of any bush and, in most cases, not any roses younger than ones that were planted in the ground less than 2 -3 years.
I have decided to prune them this Fall. My question to
@Paul2032 is: when your helper pruned your roses, had the roses gone dormant?
