How to heel a broken stem?

16 years ago

Hi, I'm delighted to be back attending to roses after the winter season here in Boston. All my three roses survived the winter quite well with minimal winter damage. They're all putting out new stems and growing like a spring rage.

And that brings to me to my problem - what happens when bad weather happens to good roses?

(1) One of my Abraham Darby roses had put out a couple of lovely nice strong lateral branches. And it was growing very nicely. My roses started growing in March (wierd - but this year my entire garden started to come to life in March as opposed to April, thanks to our relatively mild winter and quite warm spring) and by May one of these lateral branches was nearly 1.5-2 feet long, quite nice and thick and growing nicely. Well, we've had some beastly windy weather this past week. Nothing as bad as yesterday but still really beastly. And over the past week, I found that this branch had broken right at the base where it was sprouting from the parent branch. Its parent branch was fine, as were all the other shoots and their branches but this fellow was on the floor basically broken off.

I cut off its tenuous link with the parent but noticed that it has left a gouge in the parent branch - rather like someone pulled a ball out of a socket. I put wood glue in the "socket" on the parent branch but am wondering how I should protect the main branch? Is there any way to properly seal off the hole that is left so that the parent isn't compromised in any way?

(2) My other question is also weather related. As I mentioned, my roses (and all the other plants in my garden) started leafing out in March - almost a month early compared to the year past. Well, we have had some cold nights and many of the young leaves that started growing also got quite crispy and have been drying up. Certainly some have survived - perhaps those that either were old enough or that were not yet leafing out when the freezing nights hit. Is there anything that I can do about aberrant cold snaps to protect the roses? Is there any sort of feed I should be giving them to help them recover from the fact that their food factories that they started up are much fewer in number than anticipated?

I'm posting over my lunch hour so I don't have pictures, but I will gladly try to add pictures if the explanation doesn't suffice.

Thank you so much in advance for any help.

BTW, last year, I had posted in a tizzy of concern about some of my new rose growth and you all encouraged me that my real problem was a lack of numbers. So, I have purchased another two roses this year that I will be planting.

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Comments (4)

mindstorm
Original Author
16 years ago
Oh dear!

That should be: " How to HEAL a broken stem".

I do so wish one could go back and fix one's egg-on-face errors on GW.
petaloid
16 years ago
Don't worry -- your high level of descriptive language balances out your typo!
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buford
16 years ago
I've had some success with 'saving' broken canes if they are still slightly connected and moist by wrapping them up. But I wouldn't worry about the 'hole'. It's almost like a pruning. You can seal it with glue, as some do with their pruning cuts. But chances are, you are going to prune that cane at some point.

As far as protecting new growth from cold, that is one I've struggled with the previous 3 springs. You can try protecting them from wind and keep them well hydrated. But if the temps go down to freezing or below, there will be damage. Unless you can somehow keep the temps up (one idea I read about was stringing Christmas lights around the roses, not the led kind, because they will give off a bit of heat). I would also keep an eye on any rose that did get frost damage and remove the damaged part as soon as possible to allow the bush to start over.
mindstorm
Original Author
16 years ago
petaloid, Thank you for making me feel a little bit better about my rather egregious error - certainly one that I wouldn't easily forgive in another. ;-)

buford, Thanks so much for your guidance!
It is rather too late to save the branch as I did snip the tiny bit of the bark that remained the poor orphaned branch's link with the rest of the plant. I'm separately trying ot see if I can treat it as a cutting and propagate from it. As for the wound on the parent plant, the wood glue is what I did - I hope the plant fills in.

The lights sounds good - hadn't thought of that. Over the winter, I had protected the plants with mulch and sacking cloth, but now that they are leafing out and sending out young branches and whatnot, I've been worried that I'd damage them in the course of manipulating the burlap around them so I have abstained. They almost seem to have more winter damage since they started growing than they did over the winter!!! I had very little loss this past year - unlike last year where I lost a fair bit of plant over the winter.

Thanks again for your help, but one more clarification, if you would, please.
I had actually NOT watered them this past weekend because (well, partly 'coz it poured hard rain all day Saturday) I knew that Sunday and Monday nights were to be getting down to zero - my thinking was that they would be guaranteed to freeze if the ground had fresh water in it. Is that not quite how plants owrk? Should one actually give it a good watering just before the freeze is to come? Or should I give it a good watering today when I get home?

thanks. Sorry I didn't upload any pictures. I got home very late from work last night and it had long been dark by then.