Roses Q A When to Prune Winter Damage Spring Frost Protection

Hello, my dear gardeners. Look at the grass behind me. Spring is coming. Although my roses are still staying dormant, the buds are starting to swell, so maybe next week will be the time to trim them. But I received plenty of rose-related questions, and today I'm going to answer some of them. So the first question is from Peggy Mills. My roses are really leafing out, Olga, but we have a cold frost coming, and we will get below freezing. Do you think I should wait to prune them? Well, usually those spring freezing conditions are not really long. Usually when you look at the weather forecast, the temperature drops maybe for an hour or two hours in the morning, and I don't think it's really cold enough to damage roses. And also, I am a strong believer in let roses do what rose wants to do, and roses know better. So if your rose is leafing out, roses know it's time to begin growing. You can wait a day or two. You can do the pruning and then just throw a shower curtain on your roses at night if you're worried that roses might sustain the damage. But if roses are leafing out, I will go with my usual rose routine and wouldn't bother so much about those sudden frosts. Here, we are expecting a snow tonight, but my roses didn't wake up yet, so I'm just waiting for them to wake up, and then I will do my spring maintenance. The second question is from Denise. I have over 20 roses, and the bunny nibbled on every single one, all the way almost to the ground. Well, there's not a question, but I'm, Denise, I'm in the same boat as you are. The other day, I was inspecting my lady of shallot, and I realized the damage there is bigger this year than during last year's. And usually, the rabbit damage is not big in my garden, but this winter, there was so much snow, rabbits became hungry and more desperate, and they went for roses, unfortunately. What can you do? Hopefully, with the warmer weather, roses, which are resilient plants, they will rejuvenate and will regrow. So I'm in the same boat with you, Denise. Hello, Olga. Spring is here. It's from Allula Rose. I live in Quebec, and we still have four feet of snow, but the temperature is so nice, it will soon melt. Last year, inspired by you, I planted climbing roses, and they have not shed their leaves. Should I remove them before they wake up? Again, I'm a true believer to let roses do what they want to do, because they know best, and there are two schools of rosarians. The first school, they take all the leaves down in the fall, they clean it up, they make sure that all the leaves underneath the shrub is cleaned up, and that's how they let roses go into winter. I'm on more relaxed side, and you can agree or disagree, but that's what I do in my garden. I let roses do whatever they want in the fall. I don't really clean up. It depends on the year. If I have time, I do. If I don't, I don't clean up. So this year, I didn't. So my roses, all the leaves are staying, and during the spring pruning, that's the time to clean up. I will do the pruning. I will take all the leaves down. I will throw them in the trash, not in the compost pile. Everything underneath the rose will get cleaned because it's a diseased foliage, and we don't want to keep it in the garden to spread that disease another cycle, right? We want to interrupt the cycle. And some of the leaves, roses will shed when they start leafing out, but some will stay. So for me, and that's what I advise my friends, rosarians, just go ahead and do a nice cleaning in spring. And the second part of questions from Ellila Rose was about easy peasy rose. I watch most of your rose videos, but I would love your suggestions about pruning a rose called easy peasy. It's a shrub rose, and I want it to be as big as possible. Do I leave it alone, or does shaping it promote it to be bigger? Hmm, interesting question. So the question, so easy peasy rose is a modern landscape rose. The height of it is approximately two and a half to three and a half feet, so it's a small, very disease-resistant landscape rose. And what does that mean, landscape rose? Rose which doesn't need a lot of maintenance, which blooms from beginning to the end of the year, has many stems, very proliferous, and generally doesn't require a lot of attention from the gardener. So the pruning advice on such roses is we don't go in and start to decide which stem to cut, which stem not to cut, because there are so many of them. Gentle shaping to the desired growing habit would be beneficial. And what usually happens if we prune rose severely, let's say some roses do need severe pruning, like hybrid teas, but with the case of peggy, no, not peggy, easy peasy rose, it's not advisable. So what happens when we prune rose severely? We prune to thicker stems, and usually thicker stems do not have so many divisions, right, we cut all those divisions out, and thicker stems can create stronger rose, but not smaller, less multiple blooms, but bigger blooms, because there are not so many stems. The energy is there, so blooms will become bigger, but not as many. And I wouldn't do this treatment for easy peasy to keep easy peasy as big as it can be. I would just gently shape the shrub. What can happen to easy peasy if you drastically remove the size, it can have very unbalanced growth, and you don't want to have that in the rose. What I would do in place of allular rose, I will let a new rose mature slowly, which is going to happen in three, four years. Rose will reach its maturity, so 3.5 feet, not higher. Rose cannot overjump over its head and be bigger than it is genetically equipped. It's a small, short landscape rose. I think it's wider than taller, and allular rose should expect it to be that height at maturity. Last year, I literally planted three climbers and three shrub roses, all because of you. Okay, thank you, allular rose. Good luck with your easy peasy rose. And again, I would just lightly trim it and let it mature to its genetic size, adult size, and enjoy it. Andrea, Olga, have you propagated roses before? Yes, I did, quite a few of them, and people believe that rose propagation is very difficult, and I know where it's coming from. It's coming from the fact that when people receive roses in beautiful bouquets and those flowers are so beautiful, people think that they can cut that stem from the bouquet roses and propagate them. But very often, those type of roses are grown on the foreign rootstock, because by themselves, they cannot grow strongly. They are weak rose, weak type of rose, and if we try to propagate those roses, they are spindly, they are not strong, the blooms are not there, and rosarians get discouraged. They think that roses do not propagate easily. Well, they do. Actually, I believe that roses are some of the easier perennial plants to propagate, and my latest success is here with Katrina rose. I propagated it last year, but you know what I did? I can't believe myself. The snow was so thick there that I forgot that I propagated roses, so I walked over them. Well, snow was deep enough to kind of protect roses from me stepping all over them, so they didn't break. Some of the fresh foliage got off, but all of them, I just checked, all of them are doing fine, despite my horrendous treatment of them. A question from Susan Middleton. I planted three Queen of Sweden last year. I had a look a few days ago, and the bark is well-chewed, almost down to the ground. Rabbits. I'm not sure if it's all around on each stem, as it is so wet, I don't want to get down on my knees yet to have a good look. I did not think of protecting them with chicken wire, as I've never had this problem before. My other roses are very thorny, while Queen of Sweden is almost thornless. Have you had this problem? When is it the right time? Should I cut them down almost to the ground and hope for the best? Good question. We are in the same boat. Again, rabbit damage, right? I, if roses are severely damaged and nibbled all over the stems, I would not cut rose all the way down to the ground. I will just trim the most damaged parts and let rose leaf out and start living in a way. Plus, we had a chat with Susan under one of the videos, and Susan said that those roses are grafted roses. Well, the problem with grafted roses is there is a union, the graft union. If everything is killed above graft union, only the rootstock is alive in the soil, and the rootstock, of course, is different, then that rootstock will, gosh, rootstock will start growing and you will get a different rose. And usually, that rose, that rootstock is strong, but not very healthy. For example, Dr. Huey. I used to have Dr. Huey on my arch right here, and it was a beautiful red rose, but it was so stickish, I would call it phoenix rose. In the middle of the summer, literally it will drop all the leaves from black spot. And then, two weeks later, new shoots will come up and my phoenix rose would live again. So very strong, very stickish rose. The combination, right? Very thick and very strong. I got rid of that rose, but maybe I should have kept that rose because I could have trained my grafting skills on that rootstock. Oh well, I got rid of it. So, Susan, watch your roses. Don't get rid of all that top growth because you might just finish that rose, queen of Sweden, and let it leaf out. And if, in the middle of summer, your rose decides to make those stems dead, by that time, there would be new stems coming up from above the graft union, hopefully, and you will get your rose back. And again, don't be strong on fertilization, thinking if you put a lot of fertilizers, your roses will just get this big push, strong growth. No, be gentle. Pay attention to that rose and stay on top of watering through this season to make sure that you will help that rose. And the last question is from Jennifer. Thank you, Olga. You have a lovely garden and your roses thrive. Will you do a video on rose care at the beginning of this season, how you fertilize and care for them? Yes, definitely. We are just delayed here in New England. I look at gardeners in southern states and they're already pruning their roses, fertilizing them, and all that stuff. Here, we are delayed. What can you do? So yes, I will be filming all the pruning, feeding, all the schedule, what needs to be done with roses in spring in my garden. So stay tuned, Jennifer. Where are my dear gardens? It is getting colder. Well, the temperature is dropping. I can feel it. The snow is coming. But looking at the gardens, spring is marching on. I will see you in our next video. Happy gardening.