After 35 years of growing roses, I just didn’t know what to expect this spring. March felt like June, April felt like May, and May felt like March and April combined!! Roses get very confused with that much temperature fluctuation. Blind shoots are commonplace this year. This is a phenomenon where nice new canes start growing up. Then when they get tall, instead of forming a bud they just quit! It’s the rose’s way of saying, ‘What the heck, make up your mind!!!’ Blind shoots are not the end of the world. Actually, they will resprout from many cane buds on the stem and you can wind up with a lot more blooms that way, but the blossoms are usually smaller.

Wild June

A warm winter here gave canker the go-ahead for a wild and wooly June in our rose gardens. Canker is a winter fungus that turns the canes brown, and when conditions are just right, it can spread rapidly down the canes and wipe them out. It has been a great spring for cleaning out all these old canes. When this happens, you are also removing other fungi from your gardens that have left spores behind. In my garden, canker or not, I prune my roses hard every few years. This tells the rose it’s time to pull up some energy and shoot up some beautiful new basal breaks that will be blooming machines for a few years.

I spend a lot of time with my wonderful volunteers at Elizabeth Park working hip to hip in the beds and teaching them the things I have learned over the years. One of my folks, Gale, moans every time I cut out a cane that is browned-out by canker or winter dieback. ‘OH, NO!’ she cries. ‘I can’t believe you did that!’ This always makes me laugh. People are afraid to cut stuff off, but dead stuff in the rosebush is just going to injure fresh, new growth. I always tell my rose friends, ‘Resurrection only works in church on Sunday morning. In the rose garden, dead is dead!! Cut it off to make way for new life!’

Rain Tales

Now that June has come, the last ten days or so have been very rainy around here. Great for the plants, but bad for the blossoms. Different fungi require different conditions, and rain with opening blooms brings on botrytis blight. This is a grey mold that just devours the blooms, especially old fashioned cabbage rose-type blooms like David Austin roses, old garden roses, and white/light colored roses. After the rain stops and you can get out to your rosebeds, it’s important to deadhead these infected blossoms that look like a ball of wet tissue. Might as well get those extra spores out of there as soon as you can, and also rake out all the petals that have fallen from the wind, rain and hail.

I’ll be going out in a few minutes to continue deadheading in my gardens now that it’s finally June. I will cut the cane under the spent bloom to an outward-facing cane bud to a three or five leaf petiole (leaflet). I used to always cut down to a five leafer. But, there are some roses out there that have three leafers most of the way down the cane! I don’t want to cut off that much greenery!! There is a cane bud at every petiole.

Use your better judgement as to where to prune…just make sure the size of the spot you’re cutting to is strong enough to support a new, blooming cane. Pencil size or larger is a good rule to follow. Cutting to an outward-facing bud means that the next cane that grows from that spot will grow away from the center of the plant. That’s a good thing for air circulation and also helps to prevent crossed canes in the center of the rosebush.

Injured Canes

Roses can injure themselves with their prickles the same as they can injure us, and injured canes can let fungus infections into the rose. After you are satisfied with your deadheading job, apply a little Elmer’s Glue to the ends of the canes. This will dry clear and will prevent cane borers from drilling holes in your canes. Don’t use school glue!! It will wash off. Just regular Elmer’s will work perfectly.

My roses at home and the ones at the Park are all blooming at least three weeks early. Who knows what else June will bring? This seems to be happening on a pretty regular basis. It sure feels like we have a climate change going on! As a gardener, I watch and remember the weather, and I first really noticed a difference about 15 years ago. Perhaps we are in a cycle; who knows? Records have only been kept for a little over a hundred years, and what is that in comparison to the age of Earth? Another good reason to live your life as a gardener…we are adaptable folks! And, as long as you’re going to be a gardener, you might as well grow the Queen of flowers, the Rose!