Rose pruning season

Have you pruned your roses yet? This is traditionally the time of year when the winter pruning of roses is accomplished here close to the Gulf Coast. We think of Valentine's Day as our deadline for getting that necessary chore done.

Of course, in the real world of gardening, we are not quite that strict about dates. I pruned my 'Belinda's Dream' roses a few weeks ago, because I was moving them to a new location. And I pruned the 'Monkey Business' rose at the same time. Just because it was there.

I had intended to spend this week getting all the rest of my roses pruned. It would take me all week because there are quite a few of them and I am a slow pruner. But so far I haven't done any of that, simply because it has been cold and wet and dreary and I didn't want to be outside. I'm hoping for more favorable conditions tomorrow.

Pruning a rose, or any plant for that matter, is both a science and an art, and it is, for me, one of the more satisfying activities in the garden. A good job of pruning can grow a better, healthier plant, and, in the case of roses, can produce many more and better blooms.

What do we need to accomplish by pruning? I would maintain that there are at least five goals that we need to achieve.

1. We need to remove the old dead wood.
2. We need to remove surplus growth.
3. If there is diseased or injured wood or parts that failed to develop normally, then they all need to be removed.
4. We need to give the plant some guidance in the direction, the size and form that we want it to grow.
5. And we need to encourage bloom.

In doing these five things, we should make sure that our pruners are clean and sharp so that they will cut cleanly and not spread disease and we need to be sure that we cut just above a bud.

Up north, where the roses go dormant, they cut their shrubs back severely in winter, but in our climate, we can be more gentle with our cuts. Most rosarians that I am familiar with recommend cutting back about one-third to one-half of the plant, certainly no more than that.

Since it is cold outside and I am stuck inside, I took a look at some of the rose pruning videos on YouTube. There are not as many as there are cat videos, but there are a lot. Of all the ones I viewed, I liked this fellow's approach and thought it was helpful. 

My loppers and hand pruners are sharpened and my rose gauntlets are all laid out and waiting for me and tomorrow is Wednesday, not Tuesday, so let's hope it will be a good day for rose pruning!

Itchin' to prune!

I've had this itch to prune something for a couple of weeks now. At times, it has been hard to restrain my fingers from scratching the itch, but whenever I was tempted, I would just count to ten and remind myself that there was still cold weather ahead and maybe it wasn't the best of times to be encouraging my plants to put on new growth by pruning them. But this week of winter weather is almost behind us now and in just a few days we'll hit the mid-point of February, the traditional time to prune roses here. Time to dig out the rose gauntlets and sharpen up the Felcos!

Strictly speaking, none of my roses are of a type that demands pruning. In fact, many of the antiques actively resent it. Their attitude seems to be, "I know my job! Just leave me alone and let me do it!" Still, I ignore their resentment and prune them anyway.

I prune my roses for three reasons:
1. To shape them.
2. To remove dead wood and tangled limbs.
3. To encourage more blooms.

Some of them, like the 'Knockouts', get very light pruning, and some, like 'Caldwell Pink' which tends to grow into a huge tangle during the growing season, get pruned more radically. But they all get at least a token haircut.

I'm itching to prune other things as well. I look across my yard and see all that brown stuff left by the frosts and I really want to start cutting it back and removing it to neaten up the appearance of the yard, but I know it's best to just leave it for as long as possible because the dead brown stuff helps protect the live green stuff underneath, so I'll try to restrain myself a little longer.

The grape vines and the old apple tree are ready, though. In fact, I really should have pruned them last month, but I just never got around to it. No more delay! This weekend is the time to scratch that particular itch. What a relief that will be!

Crape murder and other crimes against Nature

(First posted here on 12/28/07.)
Step away from the crape myrtle! Now put down those pruning shears. Slowly! You were about to commit a crime against Nature by topping that tree.

Not only are you committing a crime against an innocent tree, you are also committing a crime against all the creatures that feed on the seed of that tree. Creatures like these:


Goldfinches love crape myrtle seeds almost as much as they love thistle seed!




Another goldfinch in its winter dress poses among the seed pods.

Many seed eating birds will feed on the seed pods of the crape myrtle in winter. I have personally seen Northern Cardinals and Chipping Sparrows partaking of a meal on the trees in my yard, but none of the birds love those seeds as much as the little American Goldfinch. Almost any time of the day that I look out my kitchen window in winter I can count on seeing goldfinches eating the seeds of the crape myrtles along our fence.

Pruning crape myrtles just now will deprive the lovely goldfinch, as well as other birds, of an important source of nutrition in the coldest part of winter. Now, admittedly, we don't usually have extended cold weather that is a threat to the lives of well-insulated birds, but still, finding food is harder for birds in winter. I say anything that we can do to make it a little easier for them we should do.

Sometimes, making it easier for wildlife means tolerating a little untidiness in our yards. It may mean leaving seed heads or dried berries on plants a little longer than we normally would. Perhaps it means not pruning away that dead limb immediately (unless it is a safety hazard, of course), but leaving it there to attract insects which attract woodpeckers, nuthatches, warblers and other insect-eating birds.

It might even mean leaving a dead tree standing on your property, if you live in an area where you can do that. Birds and other animals absolutely love dead trees! They are a source of food and can also become a place of shelter where cavity nesting birds can raise their young or where they can roost on cold winter nights or in bad weather.

Birds also love brush piles. If you can stack the dead limbs that you prune in some out-of-the-way corner of your yard, you will make the little birds in your neighborhood very happy. This brush pile, by the way, is also an excellent place to deposit your Christmas tree - that is, if you had a live tree that was cut. The evergreen branches will provide shelter for the birds for weeks to come.

Not only crape myrtles, of course, but many of the shrubs and trees that we have in our yards produce food that is important to birds at this time of year. The one that springs readily to mind is the holly. We grow many different varieties of the holly in our landscapes and almost all of them produce berries that are loved by birds such our permanent neighbor, the Northern Mockingbird, and our dapper winter visitor, the Cedar Waxwing.

As its name implies the Cedar Waxwing also will feed voraciously on the fruit of the cedar and junipers, many of which are staples in our landscapes. The stories of waxwings and even American Robins becoming intoxicated on the fermented fruit of junipers are not just a suburban legend. It actually happens, but, in my yard at least, such fruits disappear down the gullets of the birds long before they have a chance to ferment!

So, if you need an excuse to put away your pruning shears and settle back in your easy chair for another day - or month - before you begin any serious pruning, just remember this face:




The goldfinches and other birds - not to mention the crapes - will thank you for waiting.

And that, my friends, is what gardening with Nature is all about!

Note: This entry was first published in early winter. Here in mid- to late February, it actually is okay to prune your crape myrtles if they need it. Most of the seeds are probably gone by now. But, please, please don't top your trees!

Pruning therapy

I've been pruning like mad this week. It's late January, after all, and, here in Southeast Texas, it's time or past time when the grapevines and other fruit trees and shrubs need to be pruned. The grapevines were most critical so I decided to start with them.

If you wait to start pruning until dormancy begins to break in the grapevines, you risk damaging the vines. In fact, it is possible for the vines to actually "bleed" to death as their sap leaks away through the cuts. So I was anxious to get this particular job completed.

The vines grow rampantly each year and, no matter how much we cut them back in the winter, by the end of the growing season, they are a tangled mess once again. It took me several hours - I admit I do take long breaks - and three successive sets of cuts to get the vines back to just the trunks and a few leaders. By next December, they'll be the same tangled mess all over again.

And speaking of tangled messes, the old Ein Shemer apple tree fit that description well, too. We took out a couple of low hanging limbs and some criss-crossing limbs. Then with the hand pruners, I removed all the little "sprouts" that I could reach to open up the limbs at the center of the tree so that more sunlight could get in.

For Christmas, I had gotten my husband a mason bee habitat constructed of bamboo tubes. (I knew he wanted one but, unaccountably, he forgot to put it on it on his list!) I hung the bee habitat in the apple tree. This tree attracts bees by the hundreds when it blooms, so they should have no trouble finding their new quarters.

After we finished with the apple tree, I moved on to the anisacanthus wrightii (flame acanthus). This willowy, blowsy shrub is a rampant grower, not unlike the grapevines. I always cut it back hard in the winter and then I usually have to cut it back again, semi-hard, during the growing season to keep it from getting completely out of hand. When I say "it," you can multiply that by about ten, because I have a long row of these shrubs along my veggie garden fence. During much of the year, they are full of their tubular orange blossoms and colorful butterflies and hummingbirds. But right now they are just brown sticks like most everything else in my yard.

Underneath all that brown, though, they are still green and totally undamaged by the freezes. I thought about waiting awhile to prune them, but this is the time of the year when I usually do this chore, and even if we do have another freeze and some tender growth gets nipped, it's not going to permanently hurt these guys. They are tough. And so I wielded my sharp blades and reduced their height by about half.

On to the hamelia patens (hummingbird bush).

My hamelias die back to the ground each winter, so in January every year, I cut them back to just inches above the ground. Then as things begin to warm up, they grow back from the roots. By the end of the growing season, they are 6 - 8 feet tall again.

But before I tackled the hamelias, I decided to give myself a treat and make a run to the nursery for something in bloom. I decided to stop at Lowe's since it was closest, and they had a lot of their stuff on sale because it was freeze-damaged. I picked up some nice violas, kalanchoes, snapdragons, and heucheras and took them home with me where I spent the rest of the afternoon happily digging in the dirt and planting my treasures.

Yes, pruning is wonderful therapy, a great way to get out all that aggression. But once you've gotten rid of that negative energy, it is nice to reward yourself with the gentler, more positive therapy of colorful blossoms. Looking at all those pretty blooms made me feel ten years younger and ten pounds lighter. Positive therapy, indeed!