ROSE PRUNING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1942, Page 4

ROSE PRUNING

HOW TO CARRY OUT THE WORK.

Prune your own rose bushes. Learn as you go, even though you make mistakes. There is no better way. With secateurs in hand, let' us go around the beds and note the amount of surplus growth carried over from recent growing seasons. On that will depend the extent of cutting required. When a rose plant is allowed to grow wild and unpruned, the blooms get smaller and stems spindly. Pruning aims at keeping the bushes within bounds, to produce quality flowers on strong stems. This is the way of it. Cut the straggly top-shoots back into stronglooking “wood,” which will carry flower-stems of desirable size and strength. Judge this on the theory that like produces like, or something very near it. Make each cut about j-inch above a dormant “eye,” and on a slant, with the “hook” of secateurs pressed against that part of the branch to be cut away. Choose an outward or upward pointing eye, to make a reasonably open bush. Shaping is important. Allow each vigorous main stem from ground level to carry at most two sappy “secondary,” or lateral, branches. By cutting immediately above the topmost of these, all surplus top hamper—weak stuff usually—will be removed at one stroke. Thus the channel between roots and flowers is appreciably lessened.

Leave five to six —or even more — eyes on each of these branches, according to strength of the bush. It is far better than having many short pieces spread along a main stemeach two or three “eyed.” Then tackle the basic structure at ground level. Cut out cleanly all old and useless main stems. You can tell these by the weak spindly growths they carry. Leave three to five main stems, according to strength, as the foundation of your bush. It is enough. There may be some exceptions in handling a few obstinate or very strong-growing varieties. Treat them tolerantly or with more generosity. Mme. Abel Chatenay and Mme. Butterfly do not make “water shoots” with alacrity. Build up on whatever foundation they offer. Radiance needs a renewal of its basal shoots all the time. Bad pruning is where devotees of “hard cutting” decapitate everything to a common low level. More branches than flowers result from that treatment.