How to Deadhead

Deadheading is essential for many roses; this pruning technique will help them stay in bloom, look tidy and prevent disease. Deadheading increases the number of flowers your rose produces each season.

Many believe that pruning blooms is a mystery and they fear that they will do something wrong.  Hopefully, the following information will be helpful. Most people ask “Where should I cut to remove the bloom?”  The answer that many of us have heard is just above the second five leaflets below the bloom.  This is a great answer and can serve you well, but there is more.

Let’s consider this example. There are a number of leaves growing quite close to the flower with the first one being a three leaflet leaf and all of the rest of them five leaflet leaves. If we followed the rule of cutting down to the second five leaflet leaf the cut would be made about 2 inches below the flower. The stem at this point is not nearly large enough to support the next bloom of a large flowered rose.    Therefore you may want to consider cutting down the stem a bit more to ensure the stem is large enough to support new stems that will develop.  

Have you ever had a stem that only had three leaflets and no five leaflets? If you wanted to do the traditional  pruning,  (above  the first five leaflet leaf), you would have nowhere to cut. The recommendation is to make the pruning cut down about one foot below the flower. At this point the stem is of sufficient diameter to be strong enough to support the new flowers which will grow from just below the pruning point.

The above advice is well and good, but you ask “How do I prune roses, such as grandifloras and floribundas that bloom in a spray (many blooms on one stem).  One approach is to remove the individual blooms as they fade. When the last flower is faded on a spray, the entire spray structure needs to be treated as if it were one long flowering stem. The entire head should be removed to a point below its origination point and down the stem far enough so that the remaining stem will be able to support the new spray of flowers that will originate just below the pruning cut.

When routinely deadheading, you may have a dead bloom that needs to be removed and as you look down the stem for a place to cut you notice that the diameter of the stem never increases. The entire stem should be removed back to its point of origin. This very thin stem will never produce any quality blooms, so cut it off.

In closing, I have two final points that I would like to make.  The first is to be sure that you are cutting at the proper angle. Cut the stem at a 45-degree angle and not straight. The angle helps the water from precipitation or watering to run off

quickly and dry and prevents or fungi from growing on moist exposed plant tissue. The  second point is, the threat of disease is a fact of life when growing roses. Disinfecting your pruning tools before you prune and deadhead roses will help prevent the spread of disease between plants.