Rose Pruning & Spraying

I have never sprained my roses after pruning but intend to this year.

What product and brand name do you use and why ?

I want to find out if it does make a lot of difference to the general health of the roses bushes and blooms.

TIA

It is a good practise to spray Lime Suphur straight after pruning your roses. Having over 700 roses , I prune in blocks so I can finish the day spraying what has been pruned. Lime Sulphur acts like an antiseptic , both on the plant and with the overspray on the soil surface, I find the spray also benifits the pruning cuts as well, stopping any fungus penetrating down the open wound.

Hygiene be it in animal or plant production is quite important.

Warren

Thanks Warren, does the over spray effect any other plants in the garden beds ?

It could, if you have a lot of other plants in the understorage and you don't want them damaged, use Mancozeb or Copperoxychloride instead.

Thanks , yes I do, I think I may have some Mancozeb in my storage of goodies

Is Copperchloride is easily available at nurseries?

You can get it in Bunnings, Mitre 10 any of those places

Thanks will give it a go when I prune. When is the best time to give them a good prune?

depends on your climate tAM, me I start from May onwards as I have a few and take my time lol

tambralyngar wrote:Thanks will give it a go when I prune. When is the best time to give them a good prune?

being in Qld, tam, you don't suffer the coldness like your southern partners. So if you want you can do it anytime after June, whereas the southern states usually wait till the frost is over before they give them a haircut. In the west most pruning is done in July and August

Ok thanks, they are just all getting heaps of buds on them at the moment so was wondering the best time to start

unfortunately like you, I have to sacrifice hundreds of buds to the bin. What I try and do is to time my pruning so that I can get as many blooms cut off for the house.

Now another thing I forgot to put in my previous post is that Qld has warm winters and a lot of q/landers actually prune around Nov and Dec after a major flush. Now Gary (Balinbear) maybe able to shed more light on this as he is up your way(I think).....

I was thinking he would know, yes only about 30mins away

Tam, PM him and ask if OK to visit and have nice day at his place and have look around.

Tamara
We prune when we get around to it. As it does not really get that cold (well I think it does but apparently it doesn't) it is not that critical.

I have had this discussion with some people who have grown really nice roses up our way and they still go by the July-August prune. It does give you great spring flowers but unfortunately they don't do it again until the next winter and they end up with lanky roses that (unless they spend their life spraying) are covered in BS etc.

I go by the theory that anytime after a flower flush is good unless you want to keep the hips. Our Teas etc don't get too much of a prune as most of then resent it and end up dead if you hit them too hard. Some we give a good haircut every couple of years but most get smaller trims several times a year (if we get time to do them).

Bruce,
With that "prune as you go throughout the year" system do you spray?
I'm just wondering what I should do this year. I'd drifted to the "prune a little with every dead head session" after Simon's thoughts on the matter. But I'm wondering if I should do a spray this winter (BS and scale) or leave them since the bushes appear to be stabilising with their health.

We don't spray the roses at all. The ones we grow are not really affected by BS. We do get a bit of mildew in spring and have tried a milk spray but it dod not seem to work.

The only chemical we use on them is rose shield to kill boreres that seem to love Mrs BR Cant. We inject it into borer holes and it kills them.
Scale we hose off or in extreme cases wash it off with metho and a tooth brush or simply cut the affected bit off.

I do sometimes think about it as we have a lot of leaf hoppers that suck the chlorophil out of the leaves and make them look a bit anemic. But at this stage I think we will put up with them.

Gary

Hi,
I don't spray at all either. I sometimes get a bit of black spot at the end of the season but that's all.
Barbara B

Wendy, I do basically what Ozros and Bilinbear do but continue to remove dieback canes throughout the season. Infected canes are best removed before the fugus gets into the crown be it grafted or ownroot.
I will spray baby seedlings and new shoots from understocks when Aphids are in large numbers. I turn a blind eye to fungus like Blackspot on the HT's. Sprays compromise our immune system like Aids and allow bugs and cancer to infiltrate our bodies. I am sure my roses are healthier when not sprayed
I am critical of roses that suffer a lot of dieback and consider these not suitable for my no spray garden.
I remove the duds then grow and propagate the healthy ones.

Thanks folks for the feedback. I'll just continue to work from the bottom up then - ie. soil first.
The advantage for me of "prune thru the year" is that it's a lot less work for me in July/Aug when I have lambing and a higher workload off-farm.

Wendy, don't forget to collect all sheep manure available to you. Best if broken up in a chipper. If you have a concrete area with sides or a large diameter of metal like a drum with top and bottom cut out and 12" sides you can put the victa in and feed the manure in for chopping.

Looked to me like you have plenty of sheep pellets