If impatient, the bottom-line question is "will I kill a rose if I
prune too early"?
The background is as follows: up here in Scotland the advice is to
prune roses in mid-March, perhaps a bit later. We currently have hard
frosts, and I would not touch my ground-planted roses. However, I have
two large (+35cm diameter) pots against the south-facing wall of the
house, and particularly one of them has new growth up to 5 cm at the
mo (despite the fact that the surface of the compost is frozen-though
not white).
So, am I rightly tempted to prune this one? And will I kill it if it's
hit by even harder frost?
Thanks,
Kostas
"Kostas Kavoussanakis" <kavo...@epcc.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.51.03...@3000.rcpp.rq.np.hx...
>
>Hi,
>
>If impatient, the bottom-line question is "will I kill a rose if I
>prune too early"?
>
<Snip>
>
>So, am I rightly tempted to prune this one? And will I kill it if it's
>hit by even harder frost?
It's unlikely that you'll kill it, though if things are really cold
you could well get a bit of die back. I would be tempted to leave it
for a little while longer if I were you, I haven't even done ours yet
and it's a fair bit warmer here I would guess.
--
Pete The Gardener
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
pete_the...@hotmail.com
I'm in Scotland too and I'm itching to get out there and prune the roses.
Trouble is, I did it one year too early (ground and pots) and, as Pete said,
I did get die back and as I had pruned nice n tidy, there wasn't much left
to flower that year. They did ok the following year though so weren't
killed.
I now hang on til mid-March.
--A