Plant Preview


Welcome to Plant Preview, a blog dedicated to helping gardeners learn about gardening techniques and preview new plant cultivars. Read about new plants here first and hear how your "comrades in compost" are making use of new plant introductions in their gardens and landscapes. Blog author Geri Laufer is a life-long dirt gardener, degreed horticulturist, author and former County Extension Agent. Plant Preview is copyrighted by Geri Laufer.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

In Atlanta Now's the Time for Rose Pruning

The rose is a rose,
And always was a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose--
But were always a rose.
--Robert Frost "The Rose Family"
Collected Poems, 1930                                            

Just a couple of days ago, on a lovely, sunny 55 degree F. day, I got out my bypass pruners, donned my elbow-length, tough leather gloves and pruned my roses. It wasn't a moment too soon. In Atlanta shrub roses, floribundas and hybrid teas are already presenting those tight, red buds that jut out perpendicular to the green canes and declare spring is around the corner. Carefully removing deadwood and cutting tall stems down to outward facing buds, I snipped off rose hips and generally shaped them up. Now I can anticipate a flood, a veritable avalanche of roses come May.

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