very leggy rose

lostinrates

I'm after advice about what to do with a very, very leggy rose. By very leggy I mean about six feet of stem before any leaf/flowers. Its a single rose, and obviously fairly old. Its also in the wrong place. If I wait till its time to prune and cut back, very, very hard then move it is it likely to survive?

brogusblue

I would give a a light prune now by trimming the leggy stem out .. Is the leggy stem coming from the soil or the base of the rose?? . It might me a sucker?

Then i would give a prune in oct/nov and move it ..

lostinrates

brogusblue wrote: »

I would give a a light prune now by trimming the leggy stem out .. Is the leggy stem coming from the soil or the base of the rose?? . It might me a sucker?

Then i would give a prune in oct/nov and move it ..

Every stem is leggy...all four of them! They are all ''real'' stems not suckers. Its at a house I'm buying and has obviously been ignored for a while but its a beautiful single rose and I'd like to rescue it if I can.

Kay_Peel

It may be a climbing rose that needs some attention and a kick up the pants.

If it's flexible, try to tie it down until it's (as far as possible) horizontal, or at an angle. This will make the rose produce more shoots and flowering laterals along its length. If that doesn't work, then there's no harm done and you can still prune it and move it later in the year.
:beer:

lostinrates

Kay_Peel wrote: »

It may be a climbing rose that needs some attention and a kick up the pants.

If it's flexible, try to tie it down until it's (as far as possible) horizontal, or at an angle. This will make the rose produce more shoots and flowering laterals along its length. If that doesn't work, then there's no harm done and you can still prune it and move it later in the year.
:beer:

Thanks.

I still hope to move it....its in the middle of a lawn where in the future some more of the house will be. So, best left till dormant?

hethmar

Ive got a similar problem with a very old floribunda rose. It was my dads and when dad died we dug up some of his beloved roses and put them in our garden. But this particular one has very long stems which bend under the weight of the roses. They are just coming out now and I have 5 bamboo canes holding the rose up. Would it be safe to cut it right down in the autumn. Obviously I dont want to lose it. Thanks in advance.

Kay_Peel

hethmar wrote: »

Ive got a similar problem with a very old floribunda rose. It was my dads and when dad died we dug up some of his beloved roses and put them in our garden. But this particular one has very long stems which bend under the weight of the roses. They are just coming out now and I have 5 bamboo canes holding the rose up. Would it be safe to cut it right down in the autumn. Obviously I dont want to lose it. Thanks in advance.

I find Floribundas really difficult to get right - it's been trial and error, I'm afraid. If I hard pruned it, it just got weaker. If I pruned it lightly, I got spindly growth with lots of dead wood and not a lot of flowers. I've now found that I have to lightly prune some branches and hard prune other ones to get a long-flowering, sturdy floribunda.

Here's what I do. On St Patrick's Day (March 17th and quite late in the Spring because I live in the North) I take any dead wood right down to the base.

I lightly prune the 12 month old shoots by taking off a third of the stem.

I hard prune the older shoots by either removing them completely from the centre (so that you get a goblet shape, letting in light and air) or I take them right back to 3-4 'eyes' (ie the swellings that will eventually become shoots) so that they stand about 9-12 inches from the soil.

So far, this has worked on the really, really old floribundas that I inherited when I moved into this house. I do hope that you can put some vigour back into your late father's roses and keep them going for many years to come.

:beer: