How To: Prune roses in container garden

Pruning roses is one of the hottest trends in container gardening is using flowering shrubs. Of course, the king of flowering shrubs are roses. Mindy has several different examples of roses in containers. One was beautiful last year, it bloomed all season long, but this season is out of control. It's too big and gangly. Eric tells us roses bloom on new growth. If cut back it would have blooms again in 6 or 7 weeks. Be bold when pruning, take it back. Mindy doesn't have the nerve to cut so dramatically, thus lets Eric do the job. He gives it a serious haircut to get it back in shape. He is bold. He shows us the cuts from last year and they were high. A rose when it flushes out will put on about 1 foot of growth depending on the type of rose. Since this is a shrub rose it will put on approximately 12-16 inches of growth and the new buds will be set on the new growth. Once it's cut back there will be a new flush and the new buds will form there. Eric wants to cut it back so it is in proportion to the container. To do this he cuts the heavier canes, leaving some of the smaller branches in place. He evens it up leaving the bigger canes about pinky thick, some of them pencil thick. He removes one shoot that is part of the under stock of the rose because it is not the same cultivar, it is the under stock that the rose was grafted onto. The last few branches are cut leaving some small off shoots to provide maximum area for bud break, so that it will get extra blooms. Eric doesn't want the plant to expend too much energy on too few bud sites thus leaves a lot of different breaks. Once done it has a nice rounded shape. In 6 or 7 weeks it should, again, be covered in beautiful roses.