All my HT roses bloom in flushes except some Knock out there are always blooms on them. I feed them with Rose tone and MG and deadhead soon as they fade. DonÂt know if I miss anything not to make them bloom more. What roses are continuous for you Pete ? What you mean by allowed to grow naturally ?
Tracy

I have a year around growing season, some never get pruned back but just dead headed and/or long-stemmed,these [conundrum,tropicana,C.I.,double delight,lemon spice,apricot nectar,heirloom,St.Patrick]have a blooms on them at all times,but never a massive flush.
Others because of their size[Opening Night,Q.E.,no-name yellow]get pruned in Spring and fall-these have flushes.
It finally occurred to me the pruning regulates the flushes,not the nature of the plants.

Yes, I've noticed that too. Although I don't have an all year blooming cycle, we do have 8 months tops.

Since most of my roses are new (planted the past 2 years) I do tend to prune to shape a lot. And I suppose that causes flushes after I cut them back and all the canes then put out a new bloom at once. The only ones that would be the exceptions would be my climbers which, for obvious reasons, I don't prune or deadhead that much.

Right now my roses are gearing up for what would be the 3rd flush, the first of course being the spring one which was zapped by the Easter freeze. But I had a pretty good one end of May.

On a HT rose cane, the blooms at the blooming end tend to come in a group. Then in temperate climates, it takes about forty days for the blooms to come a second time. (When temperatures are in the eighties and 90s, the time is less.)
Many of us have our roses reset by nature to a single starting time.
If you have no winter, no die back, no necessity to prune off dead material, you've not had your roses' starting times reset, so you're getting roses on canes of varying ages.
What roses do and how they behave is regional.

Pete is basically right. Each stem blooms on a six week cycle, but the reason they are synchronized is spring pruning. After the third flush, I expect scattered continuous bloom rather than a clear 4th or possibly 5th flush.

Buford, near neighbor, I have two HTs, Elina and Frederic Mistral, that haven't finished the first flush yet, in fact FM is in full bloom. I do have some that are about to start a second flush. Generally things seem less synchronized than usual.

Thanks Michael-thats what I was getting at.The massive flushes aren't really natures way and that its location[Ann's pt.] and pruning.So the moderns aren't that far from the Antiques.

So if you live in an area where you don't cut back for winter protection you can have roses to cut all season long by using a combo of dead heading and long stemming to keep the plant in size zone you want.As I have mentioned before some of my roses are going on four and five years with constant[365] blooming.

Small correction, Pete. I don't think most northerners prune for winter protection. They prune late winter/early spring to get rid of the wood killed by winter. Unfortunately, that can mean nearly to the ground some years.

Long-stemming? Never heard that term before, but I guess it is fairly descriptive--selecting individual stems and pruning them down lower while leaving others at their current height? (I guess.)

Haven't thought about this much, but I have some roses that have very distinct flushes, no matter what I do with them. The floribunda Eutin comes to mind. I have others that are always trying to put out at least a couple blooms--besides the KOs, Austin's Mayflower and John Clare occur to me. So I think the rose somewhat determines the matter also--though I can see your point about spring pruning. However, after the spring pruning, I only deadhead--doesn't change the way they bloom, as far as I can see.

Maybe I'm missing the point. LOL

Kate

Too far North Kate-mama nature puts yours on schedule.
When you have year round growth you can take different length stems and stagger the flushes.Down here the only flushes are on my Grandafloras because I have to cut them back drastically.

Elina does not know when to quit blooming or growing. With the severe drought we have had, there has not been a single day without at least a bouquet of 20 flowers throughout this time. I can always count on Elina but otherwise, I am not pruning this year as I expect pruned roses would appreciate some water and fertilizer. I am not going to give them fertilizer without water and nature is not cooperating with me. No rain since first week in April although everyday we get thunderstorms and wind but no rain. We have not mowed our grass in two weeks, and normally we are mowing every 2-3 days this time of year.

Well, I'm still wondering how much pruning is the primary issue. How about roses going semi-dormant in prolonged hot weather? By the end of August, most of my roses have shut down. Fortunately, the cooler autumn weather revives them. Doesn't Florida have extreme heat sometimes?

Ok--you gotta be there (Florida) to understand. Hmmmm.

Kate

Kate-- no, penninsular Florida does not have extreme heat, especially not near the coasts. The summer months are very comfortable for roses, with an afternoon thundershower about every other day. Night temps are often in the low 70s and highs typically 88-93.

Well, now I am truly experiencing geographical envy. Every August I wonder why I didn't take that job in Alaska that was offered 30 years ago! LOL

Kate

Class and climate determine how many flushes a rose has each year.
The group of roses called "Old Garden Roses" include once a year bloomers, such as Alba, and Gallica, as well as the two classes in rosedom which bloom the most each year "China" and "Tea", which have the fastest rebloom rate. In the Bay area China class roses bloom every month from March through October.
Modern roses, such as Hybrid Tea and Florabunda roses produce on average 3 to 4 flushes per year, from Seattle to San Francisco, but the same cultivars of those classes will continue to bloom later in the year in Los Angeles and other warm climate zones.

Luxrosa

I have to 'long stem' my Mr. Lincoln, even if I'm not bringing the blooms inside. Othewise I get 3 ft canes on top of 4 ft canes...

Micheal, but you have nice cool nights with your mountain climate! Aren't you in/near Asheville? I'm trying to talk DH into retiring there, but he always frets about SNOW.

Having all year roses sounds nice, but I like having a break.

Buford, Elina and FM are still in the first flush because they started really late. The Easter Freeze stunned them, and then you know they don't want to bloom until they've grown 3' and 4' stems.

We don't get much snow. Well, a 24" blizzard in March, once, shut in for a week.

I prune my reblooming roses for continuous bloom. The first bloom is one big flush due to winter dieback and spring pruning.
I then stagger the times I prune off the spent blooms. Doing this causes blooms through out the season.
By continuously removing the spent blooms as needed or cutting for bouquets I have roses in all stages of growth.
During lazy years or when health reasons forced me to prune spent blooms all at once instead of as needed I would get flushes. But this was due to my practices not a natural occurance of the rose. This year is a good one for me so far. I check the beds two to three times a week and prune spent blooms down to thick cane to keep the blooms coming.

Kate, if you still don't understand Pete's point, let me take a stab:

Each stem on a garden rose goes through a cycle consisting of stem elongation, bud formation, blooming, and perhaps, deadheading. Pete's first point is that the cycles for the various stems on a rose are not necessarily synchronous, each stem simply follows its own cycle, and there is no natural cycle (or "flush") for the plant as a whole.

Pete's second point is that in the colder zones, we put all the stems on a plant in sync by our spring pruning because this necessarily puts all stems at the starting, elongation, stage of the cycle. MichaelG and Ann pointed out that as the growing season progresses, the various stems gradually fall out of sync. Karl pointed out that staggered pruning also helps put the stems out of sync, all with the result of continuous, but less spectacular blooming from the plant.

I sometimes think that Pete is not the world's greatest explainer but I believe that he is a gifted observer of his roses and when he speaks, I try to listen.

Thanks for the explanation, Mike. I just realized I stagger-pruned my Mortimer Sackler. I want it to be a 5 ft shrub; it wants to be a climber, I think. So I went back on several different occasions several weeks apart to prune back selected canes. So if the sun would ever return to Kansas (it's still raining here), I may find that I have more continuous bloom on this rose--which would be great since it is right by the back door. This will be interesting to see--my unintentional experiment.

Yes, Pete is a good observer of roses--I agree.

Kate