Pruning Old Rambler Roses

I winter I begin by cutting out dead, diseased and old wood. A rose, unlike a tree does not produce shoots that increase in size each year. Instead they procuce increasingly smaller twiggy growth, with fewer flowers, until the upper portions become exhausted. Visualize a wild or rambling rose with a strong cane thrusting up from its base. It grows vigorously the first year and flowers freely in the second. As the years pass, the cane loses vigor until another cane springs from its base. The primary cane slowly dies of starvation and disease. In nature or if it were left alone, in an area where it could not fling its canes into the nearest tree, this dead wood would form the hammock that the new canes scrambled over.

If there are lots of new canes coming from the base I select some to keep and some to cut out. When you are dealing with vigorous plants you can afford to cut out quite a few canes and still have thousands of flowers. What I choose to keep or discard has a lot to do with what kind of structure they are on. I leave more canes on the roses growing along the fence because they also serve as a barrier against the busy street corner it abuts. On a smaller, but still sturdy structure, I keep fewer canes and loosely braid them, cutting off the ends that have grown too long to fit. My R. "Velchenblau" takes kindly to this treatment and the job is not so fraught with danger as it is practically thornless.

If a cane is older, perhaps it had blooms last year but it is still healthy, I cut off all the lateral growth flush with the main cane. Even cut back this far, there are usually hidden buds that will send out new flowers along the cane.

Another reason to keep an old cane is if it has thrown out a new cane higher up and and you would like it to cover a longer distance. Prune back to this new cane. This works well on a twelve foot high gate we have that has an expanse of twenty four feet across the top.

Some situations discourage pruning of these giants. A good example is if you have given a Rambler permission to climb into a tree. Then, you might as well leave it to

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