How to prune a room rose correctly?

Indoor roses are so popular that they began to be perceived as a kind of seasonal decoration or festive accent. Many growers simply throw away the rose after flowering, although even in a potted format, it remains a full-fledged shrub and can delight us for many years. In addition to the cool wintering, roses only need proper care to re-bloom. The key factor is correct pruning, which is almost the same as pruning garden princesses.

Pruning a room rose. Farmer Burea-Uinsurance.com Diedra Black

Indoor roses cannot be called difficult to grow plants. It’s just that you need to carefully select temperature conditions for them and take a responsible approach to care. If you surround your roses with care, they will bloom relentlessly and almost constantly.

For indoor roses, watering, and feeding, and access to fresh air, and frequent examinations are important. But if all other basic care items are “responsible” for the health and strength of plants, then one of the procedures is the key to its abundant and continuous flowering.

Pruning is the secret behind the luxurious flowering of potted roses. In this, miniature copies of garden ladies (which are indoor roses) are no different from any other varietal roses.

For indoor roses, three types of pruning must be carried out:

  1. Regular, annual pruning for formation and flowering.
  2. Regulatory pruning to deal with weak or out-of-the-line shoots.
  3. Seasonal pruning, which is the removal of withering parts of the plant.

Without exception, all indoor roses, regardless of their origin and class, perfectly tolerate even the strongest pruning and allow shaping. Both miniature, and floribunda, and Chinese varieties are pruned according to the general rules..

When pruning indoor roses, it is very important to comply with all sanitary and hygienic standards:

  • use only sharp tools, and best of all – special pruners for pruning shrubs;
  • make sure the tools are clean and treat the working surfaces with disinfectants;
  • all sections should be processed at once by means of protection.

Whatever pruning on roses is discussed, even in a room format, the cuts must be done correctly, carefully checking the location of the buds. For indoor roses, pruning is carried out only above the buds, as close as possible, but still leaving a part of the trunk about 0,5 cm long to eliminate the risk of damage to the bud itself. Damaged shoots are trimmed to healthy tissue. The cut is done only at an angle, from the kidney.

Basic pruning of indoor roses

Indoor roses are pruned to stimulate thickening of the bushes and as abundant flowering as possible according to the same principles and rules as any other cultivated bush roses, including garden roses. Shortening all old shoots to stimulate new growth is a major challenge. It is impossible to stimulate the growth of strong, healthy and high-quality young shoots without pruning: indoor queens bloom on the shoots of the current year, and without pruning, flowering will be very scarce.

Basic pruning of indoor beauties is carried out after a period of rest and before the start of active growth. Usually, roses are pruned in February or early March. But it is best to focus on a much more obvious sign – swelling of the kidneys. They should not wake up, begin to develop, but only “turn up” so that it is easy to recognize future growth points. The duration of daylight hours at the time of pruning should already exceed 10 hours.

For indoor roses, both late and early pruning are equally dangerous:

  • if pruning is carried out ahead of time, during a short daylight hours, then new shoots will develop too weakly, and both foliage and flowering will suffer;
  • if pruning is done late, when growth begins to develop from the buds, then as a result of a cardinal shearing, growth will stop, the plant will spend energy on adaptation, and all development before pruning will be “wasted” and deplete the plant.

Indoor rose in potsIndoor rose in pots. Farmer Burea-Uinsurance.com Andrea Satterfield

The main pruning begins not with a general regulating pruning, but with a mandatory sanitary cleaning. This procedure is typical for all shrubs in both garden and indoor culture:

  1. First of all, remove all damaged, dry shoots. Pruning is carried out to healthy tissue. If it makes no sense to preserve the rest of the shoot (for example, if there are no buds on it), then they are pruned to the ground.
  2. All weak, elongated, thinned shoots are cut to the base.
  3. The bushes are carefully examined and the branches are cut to the base, thickening the crown and growing inside the bushes. During trimming, you also need to remove:
    • strongly curved shoots;
    • twigs without an upper central bud (stubs);
    • one of any overlapping shoots and extra twigs growing from a single bud.

If pruning was carried out after flowering, then before the main pruning, they just cut out previously missed or new problem areas, carry out control.

The most reliable rule, which allows you to always trim the rose correctly, is to cut all the shoots to half their length. If you have no experience of growing roses in a room culture, or you are afraid of pruning, then apply this particular pruning principle. This is the safest way to cut indoor roses.

If pruning does not scare you, and you can easily navigate in the plant itself, you can “count” the buds well and adjust the pruning individually on each bush, then it is better to use a less versatile, but also more productive strategy. All shoots of a room rose are shortened, leaving at least 3 high-quality buds on them (the optimal number is 4-5 buds). The degree of pruning is determined depending on the desired compactness and shape of the bush, the condition of the plant, the thickness and height of the shoots. Small-flowered roses like a lower pruning than large-flowered ones, low-growing shoots are cut into three buds, and up to 5-6 buds can be left on powerful ones. On any bush, it is imperative to leave 4-5 strong skeletal shoots (they are usually shortened to 3-5 buds, leaving a base 10-15 cm high).

The formation of a rose can be carried out at will. When pruning roses, you can set a strict, almost topiary shape of a ball or cone, you can limit the height or make the bushes “flat”. Different types of roses are more “prone” to their particular shape. So, floribundas and Chinese (Bengal) indoor roses are formed at will, miniature roses are often grown in a spherical, conical or elliptical shape. If the rose was bought with a certain shape of the bush, then with regular pruning it is supported and the escaping shoots are shortened. If they want to set a new shape for a room rose, then it is better to carry out the formation gradually and stretch for several years, cutting off only part of the shoots every year and giving the plant time for high-quality thickening of the crown and restoration.

In addition to the main pruning, roses are worth keeping an eye on throughout the rest of the year. If some shoots grow unproductively, are too weak or thin, stretch out, stand “naked”, it is better to remove them immediately.

Leaving after main pruning

Roses that have undergone the basic pruning procedure should not be immediately exposed to the sun and warmth. Before the leaves appear, trimmed indoor beauties are best kept in a room with a cool temperature of about 10-11 degrees and in diffused lighting. They can be rearranged to bright lighting and room temperatures only after the first leaves appear.

Watering after pruning for a room rose should be very gentle. Waterlogging at this stage poses a very big threat, and the complete drying of the substrate may not allow the plant to release full-fledged strong branches. Top dressing is not resumed until the roses begin to actively develop. It is worth paying attention to the humidity of the air: high humidity in the first weeks after pruning increases the risk of spreading diseases and affecting indoor roses with fungal infections.

Caring for indoor roses after pruningCaring for indoor roses after pruning. Farmer Burea-Uinsurance.com klenova

Additional and seasonal treatments

The correct pruning for indoor roses starts at the flowering stage. As with garden beauties, fruiting in indoor roses negatively affects the duration of flowering and its characteristics. Bushes must be regularly inspected and the withering flowers must be removed from the plant at all times. Such “cleaning” will allow not only to prolong flowering, but will also give an opportunity to admire the flawless bushes in pots, which are far from being adorned by the look of withering petals.

Basic seasonal treatments during flowering:

1. As soon as the flowers wither on the rose, all the faded parts of the shoots are shortened to the first full-fledged leaf (five-leafed leaf) or to the first full-fledged bud looking outward. Pruning over the bud is carried out according to the same rules as the main pruning on indoor roses.

2. If you want to achieve constant flowering from the rose, you can cut the stem to the fifth bud after the flower has fully opened, thereby stimulating the growth of new shoots and buds. Each new shoot during the entire growing period is shortened in the same way as with the main pruning. This option is laborious and does not always bring the desired result; in conditions of reduced daylight hours, the rose will still stop flowering, so it is better to simply remove faded inflorescences in the usual way and not combine pruning and flowering.

3. As part of additional measures, remember to remove dry or damaged parts. It is also better to cut dry or starting to dry out leaves or twigs, without waiting for the spring sanitary cleaning.

It is better to supplement the last cuttings of faded inflorescences with sanitary cleaning – removing damaged, weak, dry, unproductive or thickening shoots. By thinning and leaving only strong, healthy twigs for the winter, the risk of spreading diseases and pests is reduced. It is not necessary to carry out sanitary pruning after flowering, it may well be combined with the main one. And in this matter, it is better to focus on your preferences and capabilities.

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Anna Evans

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