Here’s the real deal on pruning a rose bush. It’s easy! At least one Nick Federoff on Revver makes it looks easy, and he takes only 1 min and 43 seconds doing so. Maybe it’s the Rasputin beard that imparts a sense of confidence in the viewer.
Anyway, Nick calls roses “one of America’s most beloved plants.” Yeah, and the rest of the globe, too. But he cautions that if you want beautiful flowers in spring, summer and fall you are going to have to prune those bushes right.
Nick applies his “3 Point Rule” when pruning roses and they make a bunch of sense. ONE Cut it knee-high, which is about 12 to 16 or 18 inches.
TWO Put your hand palm upward and form a cup shape. That’s how you want the pruned rosebush to look, with three to five main branches cupped around a hollow. The knuckles represent buds, which should face outward like your knuckles. Cut away the excess internal growth to create the hollow, airy space where the new rosebush will thrive. THREE Prune the roses diagonally about a 1/4 inch above the outward facing bud.
Oh, Nick adds you should use a good bypass pruner, availabe at your local nursery or garden centre. ADDITIONAL POINT FROM ME: Wear gardening gloves when pruning roses.
It’s David Epstein of GrowingWisdom.com fame again,this time giving a short (2 min 25 sec) springtime brief on how to prune a rose bush. Here is a useful quick lesson in something that is reputed to be difficult but is really quite easy. Tools are important: David uses gloves (rose bushes can be incredibly thorny) and using clean prune shears (you don’t want diseases spreading from one plant to another through your garden equipment).
David is very encouraging about the act of pruning. He says, “It’s really hard to mess up a rose bush!” Look for the buds on the vertical branches. Leave three or four buds on a branch and prune the stem at an angle about 1/4 inch above the last bud. (Those buds are going to form the lateral branches later on.) Then you prune the bush into a vase shape, making it nice and open for air flow. This discourages disease, says David.
Clever tip: David packs the cut branches in a pile pointing in the same direction so they can be lifted and disposed of easily once you are done. Oh, and after pruning he gives the rose bush a little fertilizer snack of 8:8:8 to promote spring growth.