Lovely thoughts. I agree that it's a wonderfully meditative work and one I enjoy each year.

Yes, it really is satisfying. Now that I am retired (love that word), don't have to hurry, and can just lose myself out there, not think about anything.

Hear, hear! I love all the fall-winter cleanup. Right now we are mostly planting, as we have a big crop of cutting-grown roses and a lot of other plants. I'm encouraging my husband (he of the sound knees) to dig large planting holes and amend them well, while I plan plantings, write labels, mulch, weed a little. The weather is still mild here and great for working in the garden. I will spend all winter pruning, but it's such pleasant work, as are the weeding and badly needed mulching, for which we finally have an adequate supply of hay. I like the problem correction of this season, moving unsatisfactory plants and replacing them, and improving the ground for the new plants.

The last two winters have been chilly and very wet and most of the warm climate roses have suffered accordingly, but the once-blooming old roses have been fabulous. We have a long double line of them at the bottom of the garden and they need very little care: some cutting out of old canes and canes shortened in tall varieties, and that's all. The beds after past heavy mulching with hay are well furnished with annual grass, so they basically mulch themselves; they don't need watering or fertilizing. And then late spring comes and they are so beautiful. What marvelous roses.

Melissa

Me too, and this week I had an epiphany about pruning and BS. I don't get BS here during the summer, but it seems to be showing up now just as the roses are getting ready to retire for the season. Now it seems like the BS is going to tell me who to prune first and who to simply let wait until....maybe forever/never. I have learned that we only prune for ourselves and not really for the roses, so I guess the appearance of BS indicates that it would be a good time to remove the leaves and do whatever pruning I'm really going to do. The rest of them can take their chances. I wander around the roses every day, pruners in hand, and am still deadheading a lot of roses; most of them are still pushing out buds and blooms, but some of them (Rachel Bowes Lyon and Rostock for example) are telling me they are ready to be chopped for renovation right now.

I never prune in the fall here but I do enjoy my spring pruning very much. For me it's a chance to say hello again to all my waking roses. I get up close and personal with each of them, inspect them and talk to them. It's an exciting time of year with the promise of another beautiful season of blooms.

Ah yes, the pleasures of pruning or pinching. Long ago when we were young and DH and I had had a spat, I retired to the garden. When I came in he asked where I had been. I replied that I had been pinching the boxwood because I had been very cranky and pinching the boxwood puts me in a mellow mood. Now on rare occasions I am invited to "pinch the boxwood" which has become a family joke.

Cath

Rosefolly, here we prune in late February, and I only prune a few bushes. Just out of curiosity do you prune now because you don't get hard freezes where you are that would knock down the new growth caused by the pruning? It's interesting how location can really make a difference in rose growing. I will remember that about chopped-up non-diseased prunings making good mulch. When I'm working with the roses, I'm always pretty mellow. Of course, last year's first pruning ever was stressful for fear of making that "fatal" mistake. Glad that's behind me.

You definitely make a chore sound quite blissful. Thanks for sharing the silver lining.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Sherry, I rarely get hard freezes in my garden -- oh, maybe once every dozen years or so. It went down to 20 degrees Fahrenheit one night back in 1990 and it was the coldest temperature in 50 years. Nothing like that has happened since then. I prune now because if I wait until February, the roses will be pushing their new growth. Frost damage is something I never need to consider. Most years our roses never enter true dormancy here.

I also strip leaves from any roses I can reach (not giant ramblers) because this is when I do my "dormant" fungicidal spray, Bordeaux mixture being my favorite. You would think it would knock the old leaves off, but it does not. It does turn everything blue for a few weeks!

I take this opportunity to renew mulch and compost as needed. It is so much easier and pleasanter to work in cleared beds.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly,
this will be the first year I attempt stripping leaves and using a lime sulfur spray on roses. The local rosarians have told me to strip and prune a little now, then spray lime sulfur later on when late winter pruning is done. It's a lot colder up here, though. None of mine have dropped any leaves yet, except the albas.

I guess the reason the rosarians strip is to try to force the roses into dormancy to help prepare them for the occasional and unpredictable freezes that sometimes occur. No one else up here grows evergreen or tea/china roses, though.

When you have/if you have tea roses, which are evergreen, will you also strip leaves from them? I never thought about doing that in the south with those evergreen roses, since I don't think they are programmed to go dormant.

I'm asking because I have some tea roses here and am trying to figure out whether stripping the leaves is even a good thing for them.

I'm not convinced we can force dormancy. I think the best we can do is fake dormancy, which allows us to use dormant sprays such as Bordeaux or lime sulfur. I don't think rose leaves like either one.

Rosefolly - It sounds like you had a lovely and satisfying Thanksgiving holiday! I too spent the last few days in the garden working on my fall clean-up, and it was delightful.

I usually prune (light) and strip leaves on all my roses in early January. This year we had some really warm weather in the Bay Area in January and I thought what a shame it was that my roses had just been pruned. So I have read with much interest that you have already started your pruning.

I just stepped outside to look and Rose de Rescht and Marchesa Boccella are ready to be pruned. The rest of my roses don't look ready at all - in fact most of them have the best foliage that I have seen on them all year! But I see that the rose hoppers are back and so I too will begin my pruning and stripping of leaves.

I haven't used dormant spray before but I have been thinking about it since the last several years anthracnose has been a huge problem with several of my roses.

Do you make your own Bordeaux mixture? I am off to read about dormant sprays and what will be best for my garden.

Cheers,
Jo

Jo - Thanks, I did. I'm putting 3 or 4 hours a day into this project. I'd do it longer but I spend my mornings doing household chores and messing around on the computer.

In the past I sometimes used ready-mix Bordeaux Mixture but it doesn't seem to be around anymore. It's said not to be as effective as the fresh, either. Last year I used Microcop for the convenience of it, but this year I'm going back to mixing my own Bordeaux. It is a bit of a pain because you have to sieve both the lime mixture and the copper mixture before combining them, otherwise undissolved particles will clog up your sprayer. (Yes, this is the voice of sad experience.) In my mind it's worth it because Bordeaux works so well, and I don't need to worry about it washing off in the winter rain. And I can use the very same spray on my peach tree to prevent peach leaf curl.

I started using Bordeaux after the late Field Roebuck advised it in his excellent book on rose care, Foolproof Guide to Growing Roses. He used to be a Gardenweb member a dozen or more years ago. He was a man of decided opinions and an excellent mind. I did not always agree with him but I learned a lot from him. He spent a lot of time on the Soils Forum, but I saw his posts on the Roses Forum as well.

Earlier today I ordered the supplies. I can get a big bag of the hydrated lime at Home Depot or OSH but they don't sell it in small amounts and it doesn't keep. It is an annoyance to have to discard the leftover lime. I ordered the copper sulfate, too. There are places I can buy it in my area, but not very many, and I don't want to have to go on a quest.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: Making Bordeaux mixture

lol, Rosefolly. I got a sudden picture of a bawling calf being inoculated in the rump with the vet assuring the calf it's for his own good. Maybe so.

Maybe I'm tired -- I don't think I got that!

R

oh, sorry, I was just thinking about your last sentence in your response to me, "I don't think rose leaves like either one." Pretty obscure humor, my bad.

I like pruning, but I hate cleaning up the thorny debris.

Sherry, do your roses go winter dormant in your area?

My wrists have become so painful that I've been off work for a month, so I won't be pruning this winter. Will have to give hubby a crash course for the roses that need it the most and just let the rest go. I also cut up the more tender top parts and use them as mulch or the whole thing if the roses are relatively thornless. I'm not about to waste free mulch, and that's all the roses get except for the falling leaves from my trees, and then in the spring a good helping of alfalfa meal. The roses haven't complained so far and reward me with a lovely garden of roses in the spring. I'll miss the pruning this year since it is immensely satisfying when everything is tidied up and ready to go into the next season.

Ingrid

Amberroses, no, my roses don't go dormant except for one, Madame Abel Chatenay. She's an early HT and has always dropped her leaves around December until she leafs out around March. Right now she's blooming. Maybe freezes trigger it, I don't know.

Gean, I remember Malcolm Manners saying that to the roses removing/cutting off leaves is like any other cut and spurs new growth. So I wouldn't strip your teas' leaves until you're ready for them to grow. The only tea I did that to was Le Vesuve. It made pruning him so much easier being able to see his tangled structure.

Rosefolly, sorta dumb question: do fungicides like Bordeaux mix kill off the good fungus in the soil? That concern has always made me doubly reluctant to spray. Thanks.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Sherry, thanks for the comment. I wondered if leaf stripping on the evergreen roses might stimulate a different response than from roses like albas that drop their leaves (I think) in response to shorter amounts of daylight. The comment you passed on from Dr. Manners makes sense, anyway.

Just thinking out loud, I wouldn't ever spray the teas anyway, because blackspot is not something they really have problems with. they have been clean so far. Shoot, the canes die back anyway and I have to cut them off, so I doubt if there's any overwintering fungal problems. I've wondered if the leaves on the teas wouldn't contribute to their ability to withstand cold; I know they rely on the stored sugars in the canes, but what about the leaves? Do they help also?

I'm going to leave thinking about this until late winter or early spring and see who's still alive. Cleaning up dead canes will probably be my biggest pruning chore, anyway.

btw, I have read that Bordeaux/ lime sulfur changes to gypsum in the soil.

Does anyone have recommendations/experience to share about using lime sulfur and/or Bordeaux in the Gulf Coast region? When and how to do it? I'm in SW Louisiana and most of my roses never go dormant. We do get occasional hard freezes here which does a tiny bit of tip damage, but also frequent mild temps during the winter.

Here is advice from Paul Zimmerman's blog "Roses Are Plants, Too". This method is specifically for use on plants that are not dormant :

"Wait for a cloudy day or do it early in the morning before the sun hits the roses. The reason is the combination of sun and lime/sulfur will burn leaves.

Spray the lime/sulfur on the roses at a mixture of 1 tbs per gallon of water. Don't use a spreader/sticker or anything else with it. Just the lime/sulfur and water. I like using a hose end sprayer so I can really soak the plants well.

Wait 15 minutes then wash it all off with clean water from the hose.

That's it! The lime/sulfur will quickly kill of any fungal spores in the garden and knock down an impending infection. I've been doing this for years and years with great results. The only downside is sulfur does smell a bit but it soon goes away."

Here is a link that might be useful: Paul Zimmerman's advice on using lime/sulpher spray

Sherry, I honestly don't know the answer to your question. Bordeaux is kills bacteria as well as fungi, which makes it a particularly effective annual spray.

Here is what I suspect happens. I think it likely that it kills fungi sitting on the surface of the soil, but that you don't spray enough to penetrate beyond the surface where most of the beneficial soil bacteria are located. And this is a good thing. The surface beneath the rose plant is where rust spores (and any other overwintering fungi) are waiting to be splashed back up by rain onto the foliage to reinfect the plant. Since I generally have mulch on the ground beneath my plants, I don't think either the Bordeaux or the spores have much opportunity to reach the actual soil surface. In fact, when I am done spraying the plant, I lightly spray the surface beneath it. Lightly, mind you; I do not soak the ground.

Rosefolly

I have been looking at the parking space that I sacrifice to dump truck loads of compost/topsoil/etc. and enjoying the fact that I actually have a place for guests to park, but....

This morning I woke to the realization that the only way I can think to deal with the issue of disease is to cover it all up with mulch. Today I will order 8 yards of a good mulch and simply suffocate all the baddies while feeding next year's blooms.

Luckily I have a good local source for soil products (http://www.grabngrowsoil.com/); not quite as luckily my parking space which was actually available for a whole month this year is about to be sacrificed to the roses for months to come.

Landperson, funny, I used to have perennial piles of mulch on my driveway too! Now I don't need to occupy parking space, but I can't buy compost in quantity, nor get the lovely chipped wood mulch of times past. My old hay is good, though.

One of my perennial frustrations in the garden is how on earth to get enough organic matter in the soil to create an environment in which our plants will grow. I hope I'll live to see the tipping point, at which plants will be large and vigorous enough to mulch themselves with leaf and dead twig and pruning litter. All organic matter the garden produces goes right back into it, of course. Also there's the annual grass, a self-created mulch that thrives in some parts of the garden, and which I rather like the looks of--it's a fairly wild-looking garden. But we're still struggling with our pottery-grade gray clay.

It is very satisfying to clean up and shape up. The process for me can be a trial at times. It has to do with the number of roses, the topography of the garden,and the weather. Pushing the wheel barrow up the hill gets harder as I get older. At times I just have to work in wet weather also.

I'm still cutting back perennials, raking leaves and learning to work in the rainy weather too.

The beds full of wet leaves look like children tucked into slumber with brown quilts up over their heads.

Thank you for the thread, Rosefolly.

I had to laugh yesterday when just after I posted about my love of pruning I clipped a zip tie holding a long strong cane of Twilight Mist to a fence and she whiplashed across my face. I look like a .... woman who prunes....:-)))) A long bloody scratch across my nose and lots of little bleedy pokes on my upper lip....Sheesh.

I am constantly amused at what I find perfectly okay: torn up forearms, tiny thorns festering under the surface of fingers and hands, a face that makes people's eyebrows go up into their hairline, a driveway pile of lovely steaming mulch.....all for the love of roses....

Sorry about the lash Landperson. I forgot to mention the blood scacrifice aspect of pruning. Then there's the comedy.It's like the old Three Stooges routine where the judge says to Curly, "Take off your hat. Now raise your right hand" My hat gets caught on a branch. I reach for it dropping my pruners and getting further caught up on my sleeve. It can go on and on.

Sorry about your injury, Landperson.

I am resisting the siren call of the roses today due to the gusting winds, and with thoughts of your whiplash fresh in my mind. I've decided that I am old enough at last to occasionally learn from the experiences of others!

Rosefolly

Yuppers, the winds are still howling here today, too, but I don't think I can resist that gorgeous sunny sky and warm temps. And, sometime between 12 and 2 my 6 yards of compost are being delivered, so....it's all just too delicious to resist....Out I go....scabby face forward....:-))))