Today the roses got pruned. The rugosa roses and I had some disagreements and I have some really nice scratches on my arms from them, but I got done what I needed to do.

I pruned them about this time last year and it wasn’t some huge epiphany, I learned this from Monty Don.

I grow shrub roses and climbers. Old roses, antique roses, English roses. I have one hybrid tea (John F. Kennedy) and one grandiflora (Queen Elizabeth). I have three old fashioned/antique rugosa roses. The rugosas are the most thorny and even gauntlet gloves don’t quite help enough.

The majority of the roses I have at this point are grown on own root. I don’t have any grafted. I ran into problems with grafted roses because if a cane dies back or you cut a cane too short, the root stock takes over. So I decided to pay the slight premium on buying roses and buy ones that were grown on their own root structure without grafting. I think it makes for a better plant.

I did not do a brutally hard prune on any of the roses. I maintain a pruning schedule with them, so basically I had to clean them up and shorten them a little bit. Hopefully they will reward me again for this February pruning like they did last year. Last year was one of the best years I have had ever for roses.

Once spring truly breaks, I will feed them. of course now I have to remember if I ordered any other roses or not. I can’t remember. Do you hear my husband laughing somewhere? Because I do this every year: I order things for the garden and I forget I’ve ordered them. That’s why sometimes spring is quite the surprise!

Happy gardening!