Dead heading

Since this is my 1st attempt to grow/keep alive roses, I'm a little confused....one of my flowers has finished flowering, am I right in thinking that I need to "dead head it "?  

I've been reading on the web and books and I've read, "to cut off at outwards facing bud" but I'm not sure if I've got any and also something about cutting down past or by the "5th true leaf" or something.....I'm so confused it's not funny......

Alli, if you just pretend you are cutting long stemmed roses, you should be OK. This is what I do. Deadheading allows the plant to put more energy into growth and flower production rather than putting energy into seed production. But if your plant is small you'll have to take less. Where leaves join stems is where buds will develop if there is no sign of any buds now. Sorry I can't remember what sort of rose you have and this might be a factor. I'm sure others will chime in to give you more advice.

Alli

All the best rose advice is to prune down to an outward facing bud. Great if you have only one small rose but when you have more (imagine doing it when you roses number in the hundreds) you look that the plant and simply cut it to shape. The rose will bud in the
direction it wants to grow.

Thanks I think I've done it right, time will tell lol

I haven't done that to any of mine and they are mostly still alive. The dead ones died of thirst, not lack of deadheading!

Today I did the unthinkable. I went around the garden and cut off all the plump new Autumn buds off our roses. We have the Garden Club Lee belongs to coming over in mid May and the Teas are flowering too early. We gave them a light trim at Easter but we had a bucket load of rain and heat since then and we fertilized during the rain.

Most have lots of new growth and tiny buds appearing so we are hoping that these plus new buds are out in flower on the day.

Hahaha how long did that take you Gary? All day?

Actually we did it over the last few days . But it took a while.