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Pruning climbing roses
Hi all,
I've never touched my climbing roses other than thinning an chopping the tops when they get too high. This year though I'm thinking I should, especially as I need to replace the trellis with a stronger one but not sure on what I can or can't cut.
I've watched some videos and they suggest you can go right to the base but I'm conscious that especially on my left hand one, there's a really thick 'woody' stem going up through the middle and if I cut this, whether it would regrow although it doesn't come out there clear in the photos.


Do I just leave the central stem and trim what's coming off of it?
My right hand one has a bit of dead and also a fresh stem that's shot up from the ground over the last month or so

Would be nice to generate some more growth and thicker lower down rather than having all the blooms at the top
Many thanks
I've never touched my climbing roses other than thinning an chopping the tops when they get too high. This year though I'm thinking I should, especially as I need to replace the trellis with a stronger one but not sure on what I can or can't cut.
I've watched some videos and they suggest you can go right to the base but I'm conscious that especially on my left hand one, there's a really thick 'woody' stem going up through the middle and if I cut this, whether it would regrow although it doesn't come out there clear in the photos.


Do I just leave the central stem and trim what's coming off of it?
My right hand one has a bit of dead and also a fresh stem that's shot up from the ground over the last month or so

Would be nice to generate some more growth and thicker lower down rather than having all the blooms at the top
Many thanks
0
Posts
However that depends hon your rose having enough flexibility to train that way. Easiest to do with new growth while it’s relatively soft.
I would cut out all the dead. Shorten them by half, you should then be able to pull them away from the wall to change the trellis.Then, keeping the thickest main stems, cut off all the spindly side shoots to 4 to 6 inches and cut off the thinnest ones.
They look very close to the wall where it can be very dry. Do you water them? Have you fed them?
https://www.bradfords.co.uk/tafs-pressure-treated-square-trellis-1828-x-1828mm
So chop them in half not to the base and the main thick shoot should be ok? Then cut back some decent size ones but remove the thinnest?
They are against a wall which I've heard is never great but especially the white one, they flower and grow well albeit having. To cut them back regularly as they hang out. Also I don't really water or feed them other than a bit of rose feed at the beginning of the year.
When other strong shoots grow from the ground the main shoot can be removed to rejuvenate the rose, but I don't think I would do it yet. The side shoots off the main stems should be shortened as I said and the dead and very spindly stems removed. I wouldn't normally cut it in half, unless I wanted to try to make it bushier, but you need it out of the way to replace the trellis.
Plan is to get a one piece fixed trellis for them both to use rather than the cheap stretchy ones we have at the moment not realising how well they would grow.
Another option is to just disentangle the lot from the current trellis, and see what you’ve got and how easy it is to bend. It’s ok to just let the whole lot flop forward, but if it’s all stiffly upright and tight to the wall, you may well have no choice but to go low to get the new trellis in.
This is a shorter rose trained more laterally on a low fence, but the principle is the same. Iceberg is more flexible, so should be easier, but my rose had quite stiff canes even when young so I couldn’t do the zig zag thing, just gradually pulled them over and down:
^ some canes on the left didn’t even make it to 45 degrees but still produced lots of little flowering shoots along the canes, that later produced roses:
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.