How far back you should cut depends upon many variables.

What sort of rose, how mature the plant is, what your environment is like,
whether the plants are budded, and even what you want to achieve with your plant.

If your roses are new, and immature, and/or you are not aiming for judged rose shows,
you might well not cut back much at all.

With many of our continuous-blooming Old Roses, we simply snap blooms off at
the point of abcission, leaving the rose all of the leaves we can, to nourish the plant.

Jeri

To me, it is a guess from experience. So I have been at it for a while and every rose bush situation is different. This really is a little more complicated than you would think. (IMHO) So we all start somewhere. The cut back to five leaf theory is good, yet myself, I am also trying to reshape the bush and from my experience, some of the three-leafers already have a sprouting new eye, so if this is in a pleasing place on the bush, I will prune right there, and these cuts really produce adequate blooms. So to me, the five leaf theory is not totally necessary.

With roses, maybe rules help at first, but eventually you may want to go with your own intuition.

Pauline - Vancouver Island

The same time when fortsytsia -probably not correct spelling-the yellow bushes is blooming.I think it is late March - beginning of April. I grew roses in Denver for 10 years. You will get some May winterkill anyway:(. The time to plant has nothing to do with the official nurseries recommendations and is between April 25 and May 10-15. Then it is becoming too hot and sunny for bareroots to survive. They will be telling you it is too early, and refusing to ship them till May 25. Argue that. Maria.

Lara,

I used to confuse "pruning" with "deadheading." Deadheading is just removing spent blooms. That's really all you need to do right now. As Maria said, prune in spring when the forsythia blooms. Unless you are pruning out dead branches or pruning to create shape, you really don't need to worry about pruning at any other time.... dislaimer: If you have really tall growth that might get whipped around by winter winds, you might want to trim it back in fall to protect the canes from snapping over winter.

When I started growing roses, I overthought everything and treated my roses like they were fine china. Don't worry too much about them. I think it's possible to love them to death. :) I don't grow HT's anymore because they are too much trouble and never impressive enough to make me happy in my zone--just my opinion. But all I do is snap off the old blooms of my Austins, floribundas, etc. I mean I literally walk around the yard once a day and just yank off the spent flowers (but not if it's a young, weak bush or one that shatters blooms easily--then you shouldn't be so rough with them, but use the pruning shears).

Hope that helps.

Jennifer

Thanks, everyone, that helps!

We had been just deadheading, but since our flush is ending, it was leaving some of the plants looking silly (Burgundy Iceberg put on overzealous, totally leafless candelabras, for example)and I thought I'd seen people talking about pruning between flushes, but maybe that was just those of you with ridiculous 10 month growing seasons!

I am trying to relax about the care of the roses, which has resulted in a rapid switch from, "Ooh, what a pretty zone 7 hybrid tea! I'll baby it!" to, "If it isn't hardy to zone 5 or lower, it can't come home."

So, thank you for the help! We would not be having nearly as much fun rose gardening if it wasn't for all of you!

Lara

Lara, you sound like me. I was SOOO willing to baby those harder-to-grow, more tender varieties when I started this 6 years ago. It took about 2 years for me to decide that I wasn't even going to winter protect--if it couldn't stay alive in my garden over winter, it didn't deserve to be in my yard. :) And I shall never turn back! lol! I have a 2-yr-old, a 4-yr-old, and a full time job... I wish I had more time for the garden, but some things just aren't worth the extra effort to me.

Jennifer;

This year I put in 2 own-root Buck roses; "survives Ohio winters without winter protection" was a fabulous thing to read in a rose description! Of course, you all may get more moisture than we do, so we'll see. But I like your policy! I'm doing that with mums this year, we'll see what survives!

Lara

Out here in SoCal, winter cold's not an issue, but fungal disease and
drought tolerance ARE big issues.
We decided long ago that, if a rose can't grow here without massive chemical
intervention, it's just not going to grow here.
Now, as our annual rainfall continues to disappear, we select roses for
the ability to go short of irrigation water, and remain healthy.

Jeri