Once a rose has bloomed it needs to be removed from the bush. This removal is called deadheading. To have a healthy plant that bears beautiful flowers, it’s essential that you know how to deadhead properly. The most obvious reason that you deadhead your rose bushes is to get more blooms. Once you cut off the rose, the plant makes re-growth hormones and produces a new bloom–Voila, you have another beautiful rose.

But why would you need to cut off the rose in the first place? You would think that once the rose withered it would fall off the plant and a new one would grow in its place. Well that doesn’t happen because a rose bush is actually a fruit tree. Many people don’t know this because they’ve never seen the fruit it produces.

When we deadhead our rose bushes we’re trying to trick the rose bush. Instead of letting the roses wither and allow fruit grow, we cut the rose off. Then the rose bush needs to start blooming from the beginning of the process. We keep deadheading, and we keep getting new, beautiful roses. If you let them continue to grow though, a rose bush will eventually grow fruit.

Though it may be the most obvious reason, growing another rose is not the only benefit you’ll get from deadheading your plants. Deadheading serves many purposes including: removing dead, diseased wood, opening air circulation, opening for sun and shaping the plant.

When deadheading roses, make sure you use sharp pruning scissors so that you don’t tear the cane of the rose. You need to make a clean cut at a 45-degree angle. It’s also best to remove the stem back to at least the first five leaf segment and make the cut ¼” above a leaf node. Be precise when actually cutting because cutting too close will prevent new growth and cutting too far away will leave an ugly stub.

An important tip to remember when cutting the stem is that blooms will be proportionate in size to the stem. This means that if you cut further down on the stem you’ll get larger buds. But along with the buds comes a longer wait for the roses to re-bloom (keep this in mind when you decide how far you will cut).

After you’ve cut into the stem, the rose will immediately heal its own wound. You can expect to see your roses re-bloom in 4-10 weeks (each rose bush varies). And the next stem growth will start from the nodes closest to where you just cut.

You should start deadheading your roses with the first blooms and then continue doing so throughout the entire season. The easiest way to keep up with constant deadheading is to take a pair of pruning scissors with you every time you head out to the garden. That way as you are admiring your beautiful blooms you will already be prepared to snip off the old ones. Since you’re out in the garden anyway, this doesn’t really seem like work.

It’s best to stop deadheading about six weeks before frost starts occurring. Because each area starts frosting at different times, pay special attention to the frosts in your area. Also depending on where you live you might want to put your roses into an artificial dormancy in order to better protect them. Again, you really need to know how the weather is going to be where you live specifically.

Once you get into the habit of deadheading regularly, you’ll be doing it without paying any attention. And you’ll be on your way to beautiful rose bushes all throughout the season.

Read more at Advanced Rose Gardening

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