Question:
My Brandy and Double Delight roses are now over six feet high. I didn't expect this. How do I keep them shorter, improve the foliage color, and have them flower more?Answer:
- Brandy and Double Delight are hybrid tea roses that grow into large bushes, as do grandiflora-type roses. You control the size of each plant by pruning. Every time you remove the spent flowers, you're pruning them.
- Thus, roses are pruned year-round, with the most severe pruning done when dormant. During the rest of the year, you shape and control the plant size, usually done after each flush of flowers.
- It's crucial to consider spacing when planting roses in a home garden. This usually doesn’t happen, so the plants often merge by the fall into one large mass of canes and foliage.
- Cutting off the flowers at the second set of five leaves, suggested in many rose books, complicates this situation. So, now the bushes are, besides being bushy, very tall, especially if the height wasn't sufficiently reduced in the winter.
- This is what I would do if these were my roses. I'd remove the top two feet and whatever canes and foliage necessary from the sides to separate each bush.
- I'd prune to an outside bud, that is, any bud pointing away from the center of the plant, structure, or walkway. They're located at the base of each leaf, which is attached to the stem. These buds form stems that terminate with the flowers.
- The cuts should be at an angle and close to the bud. The excess stem will die back naturally if you leave too much space or plant tissue above the bud. This produces the black tips that are seen on many rose bushes.
- Frequent watering and nutrients improve the foliage color and encourage more flowers. Roses are heavy feeders and love plenty of moisture. So, continue this through October.
- In the spring and fall, you supplement your rose food with Magnesium Sulfate, better known as Epsom Salt, for dark green leaves and basal shoots.
- With water and fertilizer, your roses will bloom again by the holidays and next year. However, the foliage will not be pristine with the cooler temperatures and longer nights, but the flower color will be intense, like in the spring. With the beginning of the rainy season, the rose leaf diseases return.
- Moisture remaining on the foliage after the sun goes down is the primary cause of rose Rust, Black Spots, and Mildew. It's not recommended to spray to control these diseases in the fall.
- In the winter, prune the dormant canes back to thirty inches. After each flush of flowers, you prune back the growth to reduce the size of the plant, preventing it from getting too tall and bushy.
- You ultimately determine the size of each plant.