Thanks Moses! 24F degrees predicted for Saturday night! Time to do it! I got three broken soaking wet bags of pine nuggets for the newer HTs and the flori and grandi. Not sure but I think I am going to cut them down to a foot or so first. Shrubs I don't know. The DAs I am having a hard time deciding. DA says cut them back by half and remove all the leaves. But that's in England right? He says do this by Christmas. I have hay and pine shavings from my dairy goat pens and they do get wet but I have to use something for the other 30+ roses. And I have got to remember the Preen! Last year was a horrible mess of grass coming up everywhere after the warm wet February. Never thought I was going to get it all weeded out after months! Don't want to do that again!

NO! Do not cut them down now. Deep pruning should only be done in the spring. Roses store sugars and energy in their canes. If you cut them off now you will be cutting off a lot of the energy they will need to start growth with in the spring. In the spring cut off what is dead wood. In some years you may have to cut very low to the ground but in other years you may be surprised at how much has survived. Leave them alone now and let them tell you what to prune in the spring.

Agree with Seil, don't cut them down! Also, Moses gives you great advice; only 2 things I'd add. First, with the paper leaf bags - I would take advantage of the fact that the bags are so tall; rather than cutting them down short, leave them tall and let them surround the tall cane (with the top cut off of course, so light and air get in; canes on very tall roses may stick out the top). Paul Zimmerman always said he thought most winter damage was wind-related, and I'd believe that. The tall paper bags protect from the wind - you can tie twine around them to keep them from blowing off. and use stakes to secure them into the ground. Second, I have had good luck using straw as mounding material. Though it does get wet, it seems to dry out pretty fast, and anyway it doesn't seem to become a solid glop (that is, there is space between the individual straw bits). One final thought - you are in zone 7a; do you really need to protect most of your roses? Maybe HTs, although I'd think zone 7 would be mostly ok. I'm in zone 6, so don't take my word for it, its really just a thought; hopefully somebody from your zone will chime in. Good luck!

Ikayet,

Seil is so right. Leave as much growth uncut as is possible. As Seil says, the roses store their food=energy in their canes. They need that energy for a good start come spring. Also, leaving the canes uncut to their tips makes the dormant growth buds just at and below the tip break dormancy first in spring, before the lower dormant buds do, because of apical dominance. These 'early risers' hold back the lower buds on the canes from waking up. This is good. Come pruning time in spring, the upper young growth is pruned away as 'sacrificial lambs' so that the lower buds can now wake up. This helps reduce the late spring frost damage we inevitably get.

Also, when you start to wake up your roses come spring, don't remove the mulch all at once. Lift/cut away the bag collar first. Then a couple days later tease out some mulch. Repeat this
gradual process over the next weeks, waiting a while when frosts are predicted. Better to be late than early in removing mulch. Little by little is the key.

You can use old corrugated cardboard boxes cut to the size you want too, instead of paper bag collars. Maybe even a couple plastic grocery bags with their bottoms cut out, one inside the other for added strength, could be used as collars, but I have not tried this yet. You definitely we experimenting with plastic collars. I may do a few this way.

Austin roses are variable regarding winter hardiness. This is the first winter I plan not to protect my Scepter'd Isles. They are young, but came through their winterization last winter, 2017, practically tip hardy to their 4 foot long canes' tips.

I wish you success, and remember, moisture retentive winterizing mulch is worse than no mulch at all.

Moses

Thank you, Moses! I never knew about the tip buds sparing the lower buds from the freeze thaw cycle of spring. Good info! I'n skeptical about using plastic grocery bags though. I think it could both hold too much moisture in and cause canker and at the same time could prevent needed moisture from reaching the roses. A conundrum.

I also agree with frances, in zone 7 you shouldn't have to do a great deal of winter protection. I would think the wind protection would be the most vital for your roses. I do like the idea of the tall bags as a wind protection. Dehydration is usually the big killer of roses.

I gave up mulching and winterizing everything except my potted roses several years ago. With how unpredictable our winters are now I found that it really wasn't worth the amount of work it was. Some years were very cold and no amount of protection did much good. Other years were so warm that the mulching did more harm than good. I've concentrated instead on finding the ones that can survive without my having to baby them. In the end that gave me much more time to enjoy the roses with a lot less of the drudgery.

Thank you everyone! This is such good reading!

This is my first winter with roses other than knockouts.

I have had some HTs and climbers snap some tall canes from wind already. Temps aren’t even below 40 yet but we get strong winds all fall and winter long. Should I cut those if the canes aren’t actually dead yet?

All the roses I’m concerned about are very exposed with little structural or natural protection.

I’m mostly fishing for advice regarding my Crepuscule plants which are highly exposed and I think very iffy in Z7.

They are large right now but I think* most flowering plants would struggle to survive the amount of freezing winds we get.

I think I can develop a plan for the exposed HTs based on all your responses so I’m very pleased with that!

Stake and tie anything that you feel might be too tall to withstand the high winds unsupported. Then if you wish to protect them further use the tall paper bags over them. Make sure you cut the top off to allow precipitation to get in and air to flow around the plant. You don't want them "sealed" in. They need to breath.

An other way to protect them from drying winds is to wrap them in several layers of burlap. This will help to support them, protect them from the canes snapping and from drying out too much. The thing with burlap though, is that it's sometimes difficult to remove in the spring without damaging any new growth that may have started before you can take it off. It;s best removed very early in the spring before any real leaves have formed.