It is important to prune all of the plants in your garden on a regular basis, but some shrubs such s knockout roses need a bit more specialized attention. The good news is that pruning knockout roses is not that difficult of a task, but it they do need to be pruned on a regular basis if you want to make sure that they stay healthy. The following is a quick guide to make rose gardening very simple.
If the purpose of your trim is to clear away stems that are damaged or dead then you can trim at any time. Whether it is winter or spring you will not hurt the plant at all by chasing to trim. In reality, it is actually best to trim deadwood the moment that you see it. It is important to realize though that these plants do not need a lot of maintenance past this, so while you might deadhead other types of roses you will want to wait a bit to trim this kind of rose.
Usually people trim in order to maintain the type of form of a rose. There are a couple of things that you need to think about before you start to trim the plant into a shape. To start with, you do not want prune at all in the first year of the bush’s life. Instead, you need to give it a season to grow into a larger enough bush so that you will actually be able to trim it into the shape you want. In the second year of its life you can safely trim the rose, but following this initial bloom you only have to worry about pruning it again when you are ready to get a shape out of the rose.
If you intend to thoroughly prune the rose bush though you will want to try to trim in the early spring or at the very end of winter. Climate plays a large role in the right timing for trimming, but the ideal time is after the snow has melted away for the last time and the buds have started to swell. Make sure to watch and star trimming before any new growth starts because you want to trim bush while the new buds are still dormant so that you do not hinder future growth and budding. You can trim in the summer if you have
to, but be aware that this will slow down the overall growth rate of the bush.
Trimming Tips
When it actually comes to trimming the bush you will need to have a large sharp pair of hand-held pruning shears. They should look like over sized scissors essentially and you should be able to find them in any gardening store.
Begin by first looking for and removing any deadwood that is in the bush. Next, look for spindly canes that branch out and grow from the base of the rose bush. You will want to remove these as they are unsightly and can also hinder the growth of the bush.
Now that you are ready to start to shape the bush you want to keep in mind that the bushes have a very fast growth rate. Therefore, you must to start by trimming at least two feet below the height that you intend them to reach during the season. When you start cut at a 45 degree angle with a slope that faces the bush. The angle is very important because it encourages the plant to continue to grow so that you do not end up with a bush that has dozens of dead stumps on it.
Continue to prune around the bush until you achieve the overall shape that you want. You can do this once a season if you like but in most cases knockout roses will only need trimmed about once every two years unlike other plants.
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