heirloom gardener: "Put the Pruners Down and Step Away": Autumn is not the Time to be Pruning your Roses and Hydrangeas

Friday, November 14, 2008

"Put the Pruners Down and Step Away": Autumn is not the Time to be Pruning your Roses and Hydrangeas

As a relatively new blogger, I'm still learning about all of the different blogging tools available. On Google Analytics, I've just figured out how to look at the keywords and web pages that visitors to my blog have been searching and reading.
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Much to my surprise, I've recently attracted a lot of traffic to my prior posts on pruning roses and hydrangeas. My advice? Wait until late winter/early spring. I do absolutely no pruning of hydrangeas at this time of year and the only pruning of roses that I do is either of completely dead wood or canes that have grown so tall that they are likely to break in the winter winds and damage the rest of the plant. For more information, click below:
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Hydrangeas: Why and How to Prune
How to Prune Roses, Part I: An Introduction
How to Prune Roses, Part II: Old Rose Pruning Secrets
How to Prune Roses, Part III: Why Prune?

5 comments:

Zoë said...: Here I would leave the Hydrangeas til spring, thus protecting the new buds with the old flower heads and growth from Frost. I keep an eye on them for bud break, but Mid March is about mormal.

The Roses would get a good tidy now ( as you say, to prevent wind rock), but I would prune those in late winter, once I was sure they had stopped growing as they have a tendency here to still be in flower at Xmas; February is a good month to tackle it where I live.; 1:59 PM
Anonymous said...: I do both depending on when the plant blooms. In our climate, if I waited till Spring--I would cut the blooms off. I have to play it year by year as our weather has not been normal. Some of my hydrangeas start to set buds way to early. Sometimes we've had a freeze that totally destroyed all the hydrangea buds--it's just not fair.; 2:49 PM
Julia Erickson said...: Zoe,

You're right, February is when I start too. I should change that to late winter/early spring.

Thanks,

Heirloom Gardener; 3:02 PM
Lisa at Greenbow said...: HG I am in the same zone as you are and I have had at least two frosts. I didn't have much to show this month. My Japanese Anomones look like used tp. I was sad to see them go. This is the first year to have them in my garden. I have never heard of an Autumn Cherry. Can you tell me more about it?; 4:25 PM
Julia Erickson said...: Lisa,

I think this is my last week without the frost--it's supposed to get to a low of 24. For more information about Autumn Cherry (a new tree for me this year), check this out:

http://heirloomgardener.blogspot.com/2008/11/flowering-tree-for-spring-and-fall.html

-Heirloom Gardener; 6:03 PM