Blind growth and candelabras on 1st year bare root roses

11 years ago

I have what seems to be lots of blind growth on my roses. Most newly planted (bare root) this season. I imagine it was the result of the really early warm weather and then some cooler nights, just cold enough to damage the tender tips in some instances. Would this cause the tips to have died, hence, the blind growth? I am more inclined to think it is weather related than insect related. Many of the roses that are a couple years old have this, too. Some of these never really went dormant this winter. The odd weather lead me to pruning decisions I was not sure what to do about.

Since these bushes are so new, should I cut these small canes back to a 5 leaf set, even if the growth is short and only a couple/three sets of leaves? I have not done so yet, after reading that the bushes may be better off with all the existing leaves since they are so young. The leaves in these instances are smaller than many of the others on the bush, not the mature looking leaves on the canes that did not seem to have the die back of the tender tips.

Maybe I should prune these back only in the spring so that the growth results in canes/blooms and not more blind growth?

I did allow these new bushes to bloom, even though I probably should have removed the blooms to allow more strength to go to roots. I wanted to see if they were true to their labels though, so I went ahead and allowed them to bloom. Some formed candelabras, as well as some of my two and three year old bushes, as well as blind growth.

Would it be better to cut off the whole candelabra down to a five leaf set, or only to a three on the newer bushes? How about the older ones?

Any opinions would be very welcome! I am in (newly designated) zone 7a. Thanks!!

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Comments (4)

michaelg
11 years ago
Blind growth is caused by a lack of oomph in the shoot. Sometimes the underlying cane stub has been damaged by canker or cold. Often the plant has run short of water while the shoot was elongating. Or sometimes it just made more shoots than it can properly support, and the last case does happen sometimes with new bare-roots. If it is freeze damage, you needed to have had a hard freeze with lows around 27, and there would be visible damage such as burnt leaf tips and wilted shoot tips.

It's my view that we should not remove foliage from weak young plants. The plant's energy is produced only by leaves in the sunlight. So the blind growth can help the plant produce other shoots elsewhere.
merlcat
Original Author
11 years ago
Thanks michaelg.

Hmm. We did not get that low a low though we did have some frost warnings for tender plants on several overnights, I thought.

Some of the bare roots were certainly healthier than others, though a couple that I thought had what appeared to be more cane damage than others seem to be doing better now.

The tips do have/had a browning, like the last most tip of leaf growth died. I can't say the growth looked wilted though. I thought I was watering sufficiently and our rainfall was pretty good.

Maybe it was insect damage.

I think I will try and take some pictures and post here later on.

I will leave them as is and not trim back any of the leaves. Hopefully they are working on deep roots.
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jerijen
11 years ago
Even here in SoCal, we get blind growth.

This year, we were dry and (for us) cold all winter, then got a strange, cool, wet spring, followed by a dry, foggy, cold period.

The "usual suspects" produced blind growth.

It has been removed, and most are bouncing back. One or two have quite a lot of cane damage, and those plants may depart soon.

If the plants are very immature, I might leave some blind growth, but to be honest, those leaves age so fast, they're not going to do much good anyhow.

Jeri
seil zone 6b MI
11 years ago
I had a lot of blind growth and large candelabras this year too. I think part of it was due to the strange weather we've had. It was way too warm in March and then too cold in April. The roses started to grow really early and then just stopped for a while when it got too cold again. Hence the blind shoots. When it warmed back up in may the sent out huge branches with large clusters of blooms, even the HTs. It was like they had stored up all this energy while waiting for it to warm up and sent it all out at once! Now that our weather has settled down to something more normal they're growing in a more normal habit.