This was a problem for me when I lived in Olympia, WA, too, and I don't recall that I ever came up with a good solution. Do you have access to a chipper? Or would it be an option to dig a hole and bury them (probably not, I imagine)? Otherwise, does your garbage service accept organic waste for recycling? Or do you have a compost heap? I willingly compost rose prunings as long as I'm fairly sure they aren't harboring deadly pathogens. Mildew and blackspot are okay, but canes that have been killed or infected by something that looks really dangerous get burned or put in the trash for disposal. Here we have lots of land so there's no problem: I just put the pruned canes in some low spot and cover them with less thorny prunings or hay, and let them decompose.

Melissa

We pile ours together, tie them with string, and put out for the trash truck. Normally we compost anything, but dh is opposed to accidentally finding thorns where he isn't expecting them. Ouch! lol If we had a chipper, maybe....

If you lay the string where it will be like a belt to your stack of trimmings, you can use a rake and hoe to roll your trimmings on to the string. Then bring the string ends up and step on the pile to condense, then tie it off. Ours have to be in bundles less than four feet long.

Short trimmings I just cram in a large trash can.

Maybe I could ask for a chipper for a spring holiday...Valentine's Day maybe. Ahhhhh, the romance.....

Here is a link that might be useful: Creative Soul

One year I layed all the cut canes aside for 3 weeks. Then I thrashed them to make the leaves fall off. After that I tied them in short bundles and stacked them up. They made great fuel for the fireplace when they canes were brown and dried out. Also they are great firestarters for larger wood pieces. Citrus trimmings worked the same way and were aromatic when burned. The leaves I turned into the soil in a non rose area.

Most years I just cut the canes up small and put in the greenwaste can and the city recycles them. I really enjoyed my rose cane firewood but it was lots of work to prepare and I don't have the time anymore.

We've thought about the digging a hole scheme (we do have 1.69 acres) and renting a chipper once in a while. When we lived in the city we could tie branches etc. in 4-foot bundles but they don't do that out here in the country. We've left trimmings in a trash can and they didn't take them. I think they only understand grass clippings. And who would grow grass in a semi-desert anyway, especially when you can grow so many beautiful things that don't take as much water?

Thank you for your input, I imagine we'll figure it out. It might be a combination ofthings that will work for us.

Ingrid

Personaly this is the one issue with roses i hate. Getting rid of all those canes in spring. When i 1st. started there wasn't much to despose of. A few bags all cut up with the old pruners and out to the curb. But as the number of bushs and ages of each bush increased.. "YIKES".. Thats a lot of canes to cut up, plus all the perrenials, not to mention the damage to ones hands after hours of cutting that stuff up.So I traded in the car and got a small truck.. Now i just load it all up and take it to the city recycling station.. A bit extreme but it works..lol...........mark

We don't cut off a lot, so there's less to dispose of -- but our trash company WILL take green waste.
When we go so far as to remove a rose, DH stacks the stumps and roots somewhere to dry out. Come the next winter, they make grand kindling.
If you look closely at the fire in this photo, you can see that it includes rose roots.

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful:

4 foot lengths fit nicely in a 40# dog food bag, and the thorns don't poke thru. I'm paranoid about blackspot so I bag and throw out ALL the trimmings. I never, ever throw out a dog food bag cuz when the time comes I need a lot of 'em. Come to think of it, now I'm growing more shrubs, teas & Chinas the pruning workload has dropped tremendously.

I bought one of those small electric chippers. It's perfect. Less messy than the gas one, but it works fine on most rose canes. What I like is that it takes care of the cane and the thorns and leaves (if they are still attached).

Before I would put the clippings in bags for the yard waste. But you know how difficult it is to put thorny canes in a plastic bag! So when our waste company quit the regular yard waste pickup and went to once a month (and charging a fortune) I got the chipper. I do let the canes dry out before chipping them, that helps with the jamming. I also use this on my other yard waste. But it can be time consuming.

This year, after spring pruning of roses and butterfly bushes and whatever else, we are going to rent a large gas chipper for one day and just chip it all up at once. I can still take out the small chipper during the year to take care of the other stuff.

The large pieces do make nice fire wood. I find once they dry a bit you can push the sharp thorns off so they aren't that sticky.

Rose branches make great kindling for the fireplace or firepit. We clip ours into 12-23" sticks and let them dry in a basket outside. We have a old wire basket I found at a flea market and the rose sticks look very nice in it. By summertime, they are nice and dry and make absolutely the best kindling for outdoor fires;later on in winter, they're the best kindling for indoor fires.

Our community does municipal compost. It gets hot enough to kill most diseases, so I put my rose clippings in the yard waste disposal bin. If something unusual or nasty comes along, I cut that up small and put it in the regular garbage. This happened when my nectarine tree got gumosis. I called the master gardener hotline and was advised not to put the wood in the compost. So I cut up the larger pieces for firewood, and cut up the smaller pieces for trash. Big job.

I don't put roses in my personal compost, because I do a cool compost that does not get hot enough to kill diseases. I don't put weeds that have gone to seed in either, because it is not hot enough to sterilize seeds.

Rosefolly

Leave them out for the deer to eat???

I used to feed them to my goats...but, the trimmings were still ON the bushes at the time..hence, no more goats.

robert

Thank you all so very much for your responses. Very useful information, and I feel much more comfortable now about the whole thing. jbcarr, we don't have deer so that won't work but on the other hand I'm terribly grateful that we don't have deer. Robert, thanks for the goat comment, I loved it.

Gratefully,

Ingrid

When I'm feeding rose trimmings into the maple syrup fire I often reflect on that biblical verse; 'burned like a fire of thorns' - whoever wrote that knew what he was talking about. There is nothing that burns faster or hotter than dried up rose clippings - almost like gasoline.

I definitely don't want to disparage anyone for using their fireplace but only want to comment that I haven't used mine ever since I read how much pollution is caused from burning wood. It's a shame that you can't do anything fun without some unpleasant side effect, but we've overcrowded our planet to such an extent that anything we do affects all of us. It's a bummer!

Ingrid

I cut the twigs into short lengths as I prune & put in the compost if undiseased, if BS or other they go into a brown paper grocery bag that is next to the bush as I cut & then to trash. Also, we often bury green twigs from shrub pruning directly in beds we are looking to improve for next year. Thick woody branches take too long to decompose so they go to the township composting facility.

I wouldn't leave anything "out for the deer to eat" because then they would take that as an invitation to return to my garden & eat everything else!

I take the long canes with nasty thorns and lay them down in a lattice pattern on top of my mulch to deter the neighborhood cats from using my beds as toilets :)

I don't have rabbit problems (thanks to the cats), but I wonder if it would work at keeping them away (I'm thinking them stepping on the thorns)?

oh