The Best Way to Prune Tea Roses
Tea roses are beautiful flowers, blossoming during the months of June and July with lots of yellow or pink flowers. Tea roses were commonly used in Victorian gardens for their delicate, showy appearance and still find favor with many gardeners who appreciate these flowers. Pruning tea roses may sound difficult at first but there are a number of steps that can be taken to make the job easier. Pruning will help the rose bushes grow healthier and fuller each following growing season. Most people think a pruned rosebush is ugly, but it is important to remove any dead stalks and reduce the size of existing stalks so it does not grow out of control each year.
The tools used for pruning are garden cutters. Many gardeners use these for cutting away dead branches and shaping flowering bushes into topiary. The best time of the year to prune tea roses is in the early spring while the ground is thawing out. This will give the rosebush a chance to grow during the following months and develop buds on it. Eliminate any dried leaves from the previous fall that have become tangled in the base branches of the bush. Put on some good leather gardening gloves before cutting away the dead branches. Dead branches have thorns on them that are sharp. The next step is to remove any dead branches from the base. If necessary, gently pull each dead branch away from the green branches, then with the cutters, cut down the branch at the very base. Repeat the procedure with the remaining dead branches.
Once all of the dead wood is removed, very thin branches on the tea rose bush will be cut off. This will help the plant grow better. If the branches are thinner than the thickness of a pencil, remove them completely. Look over the rosebush for any branches that have spots on them. Black or brown spots are a sign of disease and should be removed from the plant. Lastly, suckers – those canes that tend to grow below the graft on the bush – get removed. Simply cut them off with your clippers. If you have to dig down past the soil level to reach the suckers, do so gently, then cover the roots back up with the soil. Any other branches that appear to interfere with the growth of the rosebush – such as those growing crisscross over other branches – can also be cut back. Once pruned, the tea rosebush will have a happy growing season when it is watered regularly and fertilized.
Image Credit: HitroMilanese, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
