I have no answers but look forward to hearing from others since I have for the first time tries some form of pegging on Aloha and The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild. On Aloha one branch sprang up on the horizontal part and grew about two feet tall, and all the other buds I can see in that area have stayed dormant. I have no idea why that happened. On TIMF there are more buds turning into twigs and hopefully these will eventually produce flowers. I only pegged these about a month ago and the weather has been strange (the new normal) so the rose may be confused. I have no idea what should be done with this bird's nest of a rose, i.e. prune heavily or leave as is since there is no danger of a prolonged (or any?) freeze. I've never really liked pegging but TIMF did not take well to hard pruning and just grew back to its same height before blooming at the top, with the heavy blooms hanging down and never showing their faces. Even now it has a tendency to do that but at least the plant looks more contained and tidy with the branches tied to four thin poles in the ground and other branches interwoven into those. Someone showed a beautiful TIMF quite some time ago where the flowers were more upright. I wish now I had kept that picture.

I did read this (http://www.finegardening.com/train-roses-produce-more-flowers) which confirmed what I suspected, that you cut out old pegged canes and peg new ones.

I'm thinking this would work best with those long lanky Bourbons. I remember someone, Olga maybe, saying that the best way to keep those young and producing was to systematically remove canes at the base. So if you're going to have to remove canes anyway, why not peg them?

I ran into another older thread on this topic. Roseseek and others said you get dieback on canes that are self pegged to the ground because the sap won't flow down that far.

I wonder, though, if this turns a plant into a spring bloomer? Wouldn't most of your blooming happen all at once whereas cutting back hard is supposed to generate a new growth/blooming cycle? In theory at least.

I'm glad I didn't peg either of the two roses to the ground which actually sounds a little tortured to me, and TIMF's canes weren't quite long enough anyway. I think I'll just intertwine them and as long as the rose seems okay will just keep it that way over the winter. I suspect in the long run this rose just may not be worth all that trouble. Aloha I'll have to handle differently, and since there's a house wall behind it I'll probably just fasten the canes onto that as horizontally as possible.

I'm following this as well. I've been curious about the whole process, and how it would work in Z5 if at all.

Thanks, Jeri.

I found this older post on the subject, and it sounds like many people have had the same experience. They tried it once. It was a lot of work, and they won't do it again.

Your comment about no fall bloom confirms what I suspected, that a pegged plant might look amazing in the spring, but it's essentially all bloomed out for the year.

Probably great for people in cold climates who have mostly once bloomers anyway, but not so much for warmer ones.

older thread on pegging roses

Yes. In CA, we do expect repeat. And, in fact, those old European once-bloomers HATE IT here. Which is fine. We learn not to grow those.

I have pegged a few roses. Most notably the Austins that like to put out octopus arms. I've had my Heritage pegged for 2 years now. The pegged cane does look like it might dieback, but so far it hasn't. And it keeps shooting up laterals. I had Tradescant pegged and it looked great for one year, but not so good after that. So I dug it up and moved it to plant it as a climber.

Similar experience here. I pegged Papi Delbard and Etrusca Panarosa (both young plants) to the ground last year. Had a significant spring flush on both and no blooms for the rest of the year. I eventually moved both plants as they were in the front garden where I needed something that looks good for at least most of the year. I transplanted both in June (our winter) but both plants are struggling a bit and neither has flowered since. I self-pegged Scepter d Isle which continued to bloom throughout the year though. It was also transplanted during winter to allow for more space. Plant doing ok although only a couple of blooms so far.

Dieback can be experienced usually on the part of the stem that is forced to lie lower than the level at the point it has sprouted from (no need for it to be a basal). Otherwise the stem should do fine. Experienced peggers can peg without a part of the stem lying lower than the sprouting point by using self pegging or pegging posts or structures. In any case the stem will probably need to be pruned out after a few seasons as the bud eyes are spent. One can peg and then select some of the laterals to grow and peg them too and so on and so forth. Much as one would be doing on climbers on walls.

I think I see a little problem disentangling my thorny rose enough to prune out the canes that will no longer perform. The shedding of blood might not be unheard of in this endeavor. You can't really wear gloves when you're trying to pry apart the canes that are woven together horizontally. Methinks I might have created a monster. Since it's never been a satisfactory rose I can see myself saying au revoir at some point without too much regret.

My 'Souvenir de Victor Landeau' is partially pegged, and almost naturally-so. By this I mean that canes which reach more than about three feet in length tend to lean from their own weight, and I guide them to go where I want. But not all canes go this way -- some stay short enough that I leave them as upright as they want to be, and some of these are actually stout laterals which emerged from nearly horizontal canes. I do notice that after the second year of blooming, those pegged canes are not blooming as much. But here's the rub, and this may not be the case with all types -- those older canes send up laterals which, for all intents and purposes, "look" like main canes, and those cane-like laterals will behave (for me) just as canes emerging from the ground. So I leave them be.

Another "somewhat-pegged" rose I have is 'Botzaris', a once-bloomer. And now that I think of it, my handful of Gallicas also have some of their longer canes "guided" to arch outward to near-horizontal. I can't really comment on whether the pegged canes are short-lived, since these are still young roses. But they also regularly send up new canes from the base, anyway.

In Spring, I assess canes regardless of whether they bloomed the previous year or not -- it's becoming kinda obvious to me which ones simply aren't as vigorous as newer ones, and so the spindly ones get removed. Are they spindly BECAUSE they were pegged, or are canes just generally shorter-lived in these roses, anyway? For me, it's too soon to tell.

:-)

~Christopher

A pegged out cane does lose vitality but rather than keep cutting and training from the base, a lot of climbers (rather than ramblers) will grow appropriate laterals which take over as the dominant cane - If you grow roses on horizontal wires (which I do), the practice of swapping out the main canes is done more or less every year. This can also be quite demanding in terms of watering, nutrients and so forth (although the extra sunlight on the exposed canes helps a lot in an English climate). It is also painful and grim, when growing a prickly beast such as Leontine Gervaise and it is easy to let training get out of hand and I was getting a fair bit of hard eye from other allotment growers. Having more space (and less time and no water), I will be letting the roses assume a more 3dimensional habit, using metal tuteurs (useful metalworking offspring) to let the long canes bend naturally over, achieving the same effect with no faffing, tying in, training and so forth from me (so the theory goes).

Some pegged roses continue to repeat bloom. Some laterals are as big as main canes.

Wow, pegging is more complicated than I thought.

I keep tying the ends of canes back down to the wire/top pipe of the fence. The wire/pipe being at least 3 feet above the ground. Come spring they put out the laterals with a k-zillon roses. After the Black Spot wipes out the leaves I just tie those laterals down such that they are level, never pointing downward. While doing all of that I cut out any dead laterals/canes. However, I never have cut out the main canes so they are really old and need to be replaced. I have noticed that any cane/lateral that points downward will turn the tip back upward. I have lucked out as I know nothing about raising roses. Maybe having the roses grow up to 3 feet off the ground is the way to go.

I think it is the sort of thing you have an experimental stab at, before concluding it really is a lot of effort. I went through a despotic phase of torturing my plants into unnatural poses - especially the fruit trees where it was bordering on plant cruelty. I had found a book on Dutch training methods and went a little mad with fanciful apple cordons, pleaching, approach grafting, all that sort of stuff...mind, even then, I drew the line at bonsai as being altogether too tricksy and fiddly...but I am off it all now and back to the usual negligent behaviour.

I'd love to see some pictures!

I have pegged a few of mine. I did Golden Celebration when it was 12 feet tall and it bloomed gloriously. You do have to cut back all the laterals that spring off the main cane after they bloom to get any rebloom on it. Eventually the main cane did die back but it was a few years before that happened and it may have just been from winter kill, I don't know. I also did Reine des Violettes but that is only a once bloomer in my short season so I never looked to get any rebloom on it. Unfortunately these past two brutal winters have made dwarfs out of most of my roses so I haven't been able to do it but I would try again if I could.