If your goal is to stimulate strong, fresh basal growth from as low down upon the crown as possible, and you have gone so low as to hit woody growth with no, even a short (~1"), stub of a cane having dormant eyes left, I think fresh vigorous, husky growth will have a hard time emerging from hard woody tissue that has few recent remnants of eyed growth left at its crown.

Fresh, vigorous basal growth coming from a gnarly, barky, and hard dense crown is holding out too much hope for success.

I believe leaving at least an inch or so of eyed basal growth at crown level will give the best new growth there.

Moses.

On one of them that never seemed to take off....last year, I took 2 hard cuts last year ......adjacent stumps that were to the left and right.....in the middle was a new growth. I removed the largest oldest wood on each of those s

tump and left some growth.

On this same bush, the new growth or growth on the 2 stumps from last year were more whip growth....nothing strong and vigor. I literally removed the remaining of these 3 inch stumps and all the long whips attached to it ....and just left the the middle new growth from last year....middle growth is not thick and vigorous but I can alyways replants . Trial and observsatons I suppose

Hi,

Cutting canes flush to crown is severe, but I am hopeful the rose will recover. If you live in a wRm climare zines 8-10, it will recover faster. If your roses just weny through a freezing winter, zones 7-3, the rose first has winter to recover from and then the severe pruning.

It us up to the rose if it tries to regrow the canes back or grow new cames.

When a rose is cut that severe it usually will struggle to grow. I have had to cut roses back to 1-2 inch canes, due to winter damage, and they struggled all season up to August, before they had normal growth and started later to bloom, even. However, they only put on normal growth when I started giving them ”Alaska Fish Fertilizer mixed with Alaska MORBLOOM,” which are balanced liquid fertilizers when used together. I poured them on the roses weekly, for 6 weeks & saw growth spurts in 4 weeks and healthy roses blooming in about 6 weeks. After 2 minths, then I gave fish fertilizer to them ince a minth-they were thriving!

Rose Tone or Plant Tone had been applied already 2-3 times earlier in season , too. However, their growth had been funny, small leaves, tiny canes, no normal canes, before I started with the fish fertilizers.

The fish fertilizers gave them immediate enriched food that revitalized them. Now I give all my roses thiese 2, liquid fish fertilizers mixed once a month and Plant Tones. I have had great success with roses griwibg well and recovering from winter

I've heard that taking a heavy duty wire brush and aggressively scrubbing a woody, thick barked crown to expose some cambium layer of growth will stimulate dormant growth bud cells to commence growing.

Exposure to direct sunlight is another strong basal cane growth stimulant. Roses in deep beds where their crowns are heavily shaded by foliage are not inclined to make basal growth from their crowns. They instead grow thick woody trunks and renew themselves with lateral growth made well above soil level. Some classes of roses and some varieties within classes are more prone to trunk development. I saw several, very mature Jacques Cartiers with 3+" trunks with all new growth starting about 5", above soil level no lower.

Moses.

I hope your experiment proves fruitful (or roseful?)!

Re advice to scrape -- at a rose class last year (Otto and Sons), we were told not to scrape too hard -- only remove the outer, hard bark (using a small wire brush). I think you want to barely expose the green cambium layer, but leave it intact. If you go too hard, you expose the inner pith, which will not produce new growth, but can create a wound that then is an entry point for pests/disease.

Re the really hard prune. I did that one year to two rosebushes to try to get them to reinvigorate. Both were grafted roses, and I think they panicked, so sent out a gazillion suckers to save themselves. I shoveled pruned one, and put the other in a pot so I could more easily keep getting rid of suckers. Now, it appears to be a healthy bush again, but it took 2 years of constant sucker pruning to get the rose in decent shape. So, I won't be trying that again on a grafted rose.

My 2 cents!