Alright, before I go any further I will just say that, pruning roses is the most weirdly satisfying thing ever. We - thought I am the one that cares for them - inherited some roses when we moved into our new home, and have learned to love taking care of them. I actually learned so much the first year, you wouldn't think that there is that much invovled when it comes to the right way on how to care for them.
In fact, now I see it now as kind of a challenge, my goal is to see if I can get maximum yield without too much pain in the process.
My husband wanted to tear them out at first. And since we didn't know a lot about them I agreed to let him try.
That was our first lesson.
You see, some of them are just impossible to kill.
I'll give him credit, he was able to chop down the ones in the front of our house to nothing without much loss of blood. And he was sure that it was gone, but it came back stronger and healthier than before! They had also planted a hip rose bush next to the driveway that, despite his best efforts he could not kill. It is also a real pleasure.
When we decided that they were as much a part of the home as we were I finally got busy and started to care for them. The fact that hubby had lost so much blood sort of made him shy of care so it has been up to me ever since.
Now we have roses all season long.
But you need to prune.
The reason why mine bloom as big as they do is because I spend a lot of time dead-heading the dead buds throughout the season. It sounds strange, but it is really easy, all you need to do is cut off the stems with three leaves, and leave the ones with five. And the nice thing about the variety is that it will happily bloom all summer long as long as I keep up with dead-heading!
I tell people it is a lot of work, but few believe me. No matter how nice roses are there are very few roses that don't need almost daily care. If you have the nerves for them then they are well worth it though.
Long live the might rose!
