The problem is you whacked them down.

I was under the impression you trimmed/pruned rose bushes back, especially to encourage side growth. We didn't go overboard-they hadn't been looked after in over 5 years...we didn't WHACK them down, we shaped them and left them about half their original height. Each bush was crowded and overgrown. Only one is having a problem, the other two are doing great.

Half is a pretty good whack. Successful pruning of roses varies with the class and cultivar. If you gave shrub roses the bedding rose (hybrid tea etc.) treatment they will react differently than a bedding rose would. Flopping around as though looking for their lost stem tissue is a typical response.

The pruning was done over a year ago. I haven't sniped anything since then, except for the occasional blackspot branch or a bud for a flower vase.

One would have a hard time to damage an established rose with prunning.I prune mine drastically never a problem.You can control the size and shape and encourage only the strongest canes to grow.We had a very harsh winter as well as spring this year ( still raining) Many gardeners lost their roses all together.I had to replace 3 and really should have replaced more.they are not doing so well with this wet weather.So just give it some time and don't despair they may come back or if not then just remove it and plant a new one.

Thank you, I am new to roses, heck, new to a YARD of my own LOL. Sadly I really liked the color of this one-yellow with red splashes... so I hope it pulls through. It was the last one on the row, so it may have had more of the elements whip by it.

You are right, my garden damage has seemed so arbitrary this year- something I will need to get used to... I have a big grouping of lavender, it seemed fine over the whole winter and then that last big frost we had zapped just the back row which happened to be a different kind- it was weird.

Thanks!

Yes you have to deal with all elements ( weather ,bugs, disease, pests just to mention few) I always say to people who expect to have a perfect garden all year around with not too much maintance to go plastic.I mean plastic plants . Yard will always change and you must accept it.I lost 2 choisya's this winter and all rosemary.Just replace your rose if it does not come back.Yellow with red splashes? hm You can replace with the same one if you liked it .Look in a book of roses and see pics you may recognize it.Good luck to you just take it easy..

Ellen, I think it's important that you identify the rose to determine what's going on. Some roses really resent pruning and grow back oddly. Do you have a picture?

What have you done in terms of fertilizer? Heavy nitrogen will cause soft growth. If it's flopping around, you may want to peg it up where you want it before the canes get woody and are permanently flopped over.

>I think it's important that you identify the rose to determine what's going on. Some roses really resent pruning and grow back oddlyYes: "Rose" is being used here like they were all the same. There are thousands of kinds, varying from 60 ft. climbers to 6 in. miniatures.

Flower color description given late in thread does suggest it is a modern bedding type, but this is not necessarily the case - and even with these the climbing sports have a different growth pattern than the bush forms. If they were tall, maybe they are supposed to be.

I will see if I can get a picture... I took a quick look yesterday and it looks like I've got some black spot to deal with as well-more than before (we have a brand new puppy and working full time, I've volunteered for a project I shouldn't have for my son's school- so no time to garden at the moment)I have not fertilized yet and have had to cover most of my just forming garden (first time I've had a yard) with chicken wire for the time being because of the puppy. It's been hard as I was so looking forward to getting in there this year.

Trust me, I am almost positive these roses were tall because they were completely neglected- this house was a rental for 5 years before we bought it two years ago. This roses growth is strong and firm in the branch itself, it just seems it can't support the branches weight and so it flops out. I've cut off a bit, as where it flops is my neighbors path out of her backyard.

Must go, pup has woke up and must take her out!!
Thanks so much for all your thoughts!
Ellen

Different kinds of roses want different kinds of prunings, but it's unlikely you damaged the rose by whacking it down when it was overgrown and neglected for so long. I'm sure you did the right thing. Most people don't prune their roses hard enough, frankly; pruning too hard is almost impossible to do. In fact I suspect you are overreacting if all it's doing is flopping a bit - that hardly could be called 'declining'! Got any photos?

Some roses just are floppy and need to be tied to a support. It may need to be trimmed down a bit to reduce the weight of the canes, sometimes plants including roses react to heavy pruning by throwing out amazingly long branches that can't stand upright by themselves very well.

If they have not been fertilized yet it may just not have enough strength to grow back the way it wants to and is therefore flopping.

Talk of its imminent death and need for replacement seem premature at this point.

Another possibility comes to mind - that rose may have been pruned back or died back to the rootstock. The most common rootstock for roses is a red flowered climber type, which grows very long and floppy thin canes, with distinctly different foliage from whatever rose you thought you had, and a high susceptibility to powdery mildew and only blooming once a year, in spring. You see it all over the place where a rose has died or frozen and the rootstock has taken over. A kinda dusty dirty red flower, with only a few petals, and the leaves almost always have powdery mildew even when no other roses do.

Hi,

How do you post images to this forum?? I am using Firefox on a MAC... I posted them to a website I use and tried to use their urls, but it didn't work, all I got was the urls and not the photos when I previewed...(I used them within the message box... I have 4 images I would like to post)

Any help would be appreciated!
TIA,
Ellen

I usually work-them-down in stages. Like 25% height off per year. The difference with big roses, is that major cutting often means much bigger cuts.

It's not the same as with smaller / mid size rose bush pruning. They do need some big stuff cut out, or the new will never replenish.

We hope to sell our house before summer, and if so, maybe I'll offer a class near Portland and teach people how this stuff is done. Books just don't do the job.

Anyway, its also possible that the problem you are seeing is not due to pruning.

If what you did exposed it to sunburn, by pruning during or just prior to heat, that's different - sunburned bark related to pruning. If one stem bends, prune at a node, to take off just enough weight to keep it standing. Find a node toward the outside, not the inside.

Hi Ellen - was that your rose in the 'how to post' thread?

If so, I've got some answers. It does indeed look like a hybrid tea to me - it might be a climbing variety but I'd need some more pix of the overall plant to tell. So, the pruning isn't the problem. From the looks of it, the pruning might have been a little too severe, but again, I would need to see the overall pictures. Too severe pruning on a hybrid tea is only a temporary setback and not anything to really worry about anyway.

You are losing foliage because you've got blackspot. There are a number of treatments, depending on your degree of organicness. An inorganic solution that gets a lot of praise in the rose forum is Bayer 3 in 1. A more organic solution the Cornell Formula (google for exact proportions), but it's basically baking soda, dish soap, a little horticultural oil, and water. My personal solution is to pull off any leaves showing markings, and do a foliar drench of diluted fish emulsion. Anyway, there's a lot of solutions to blackspot and you can find one that works for you.

Secondly - that floppy growth isn't really anything to be concerned about. It may be a result of the blackspot, or it could just be part of this plant's habit. Anyway, twiggy growth like that can be cut out. It will never get thick and strong.

Thirdly, you have some dead stubs going on there. This may be the result of your pruning (too far from the bud) but sometimes roses will just die down to a lower bud than the one you chose. Cut out any dead wood.

Fourthly, fertilize. You can promote basal breaks (big strong canes from the graft) with epsom salts. Scratch a tablespoon into the soil around the rose. Another break promoter is alfalfa tea. You can do a search on the rose forum for the many, many, discussions of it, but it's basically just alfalfa pellets or meal fermented in water.

The good news is, it isn't declining, it's just being a typical hybrid tea rose.

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These are her pics, but I'll have to wait for her to post explainations.

I'm looking at the second photo, of the base of the yellow rose. Not at all a too severe pruning, but the new canes are spindly and floppy. Not unusual for a hybrid tea but undesirable in such a narrow space. They look like they're undernourished. The canes they're growing off of look nice and thick and healthy but the new growth is nothing like. Rose canes should be thicker than that, more like what you left when you pruned it. I would feed with a complete rose fertilizer, not too high on nitrogen, and plain fertilzier no insecticides or anything like that. A good organic rose food would be best, they tend to have a better balance of nitrogen. Alfalfa tea would definitely be helpful with the fertilizer. Perhaps some epsom salt, I don't know if Portland soils tend to be deficient in magnesium like they are up here, which is what the epsom salt provides. And a mulch of compost, but you'd have to put chicken wire over it to keep the puppy from eating the compost - been there done that. She'll probably eat the dirt where you fertilize too, just a head's up there. Chicken wire will be your gardening pal for a while now until puppy matures.

Prune out any cane stubs that are either dead or not sprouting new growth, and sit back and let it do its thing. I see black on the leaves but I can't tell whether or not it's actually blackspot, what I can see might be sunburn, or spray burn as if it were sprayed with something too strong or with too hot sun on it at the time.

Thanks Cathy, I REALLY appreciate you posting the pics!

I probably need to take more with better light on the area, but maybe I've shown enough. It's a south facing wall on the outside of my house- it's sort of a side area that is used more by the next-door neighbor as it is the walkway to her backyard, so I don't look at it as often as I should.

The rose bush to the far right is obviously the declining one- it has a happy, full bloom-the yellow one in the closeup. Last year I cut back the black spot and then it seems to have come back with a vengeance this Spring. With the new puppy I haven't had as much time to putter and fix as I would like. Though it's branches bend out, they are otherwise strong.I wish they would fill out a bit as I have cut out the bendy bits as they happen.

The other two- the one in the middle is the white with pink edges close up and the one on the end is a full dark red- it hasn't opened yet- last year I had problems with the buds dying before opening for a bit.

As you can tell, I know nothing about roses, but would like to learn. After the sale of the house we lost contact with the previous owner- I would've loved to hear what these were and also a supposed Wisteria climbing up our front post that has never bloomed.

If you need better pictures, let me know- I could probably take better close ups of the foliage. I will look into the great suggestions above- Thank you, I appreciate this SO much, this is great!!

Ellen