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A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

January 15^th has come and gone and, for once, I am not feeling guilty. Why? I actually have all my roses pruned. Now, it may not sound like much, but there have been years when I have waited far too long to attend to this task.

Big job

I have nearly 40 mature roses in my garden of varying types. I have 2 large beds in the rear garden with Mikado, JFK roses and a host of others I cannot identify. There is also a small collection of pink and yellow shrub roses. The front driveway is lined on both sides with mature Bewitched roses. The far property line contains another line of the same. These throw off fist-sized pink blossoms all year. Finally, beneath the kitchen window is a large pink climber, a beautiful red rose and a small shrub rose I transplanted a few years ago. Quite a motley collection, but I have grown to love it. Visitors often go away with a vase-full of blooms as there is no way we can make use of all of them.

Over the last 3 years I have developed my pruning ritual into a bit of a science so I was able to finish it in only 21/2 hours. To make it as easy as possible I roll out one of our large green garden recycling bins and grab a small folding chair to save my knees. I pull up my chair like I am sitting down at the dinner table and go at it. The canes go right into the bin so I am cleaning up as I go. When one rose is done I pull the barrel down the line, reposition my chair and go back to work.

Lazy

According to all my reference books I am supposed to use dormant spray on all my roses, but I have never done this. While not a fully organic gardener I don't like using too many sprays or pesticides. My young son loves the garden and I don't want to have to worry about him touching this or that. The biggest reason, though, is simple laziness. If plants can't survive in my garden with a little neglect then they don't belong there. I am not one to coddle my garden.

Even though some newspaper and magazine articles have been preaching light pruning this year I performed my usual hard pruning, bringing the plants down to about 1-1.5 feet in height. By this time of the year the plants are looking rather gangly and crowded so a hard pruning seems to be the only way to keep them looking presentable in the coming year.

Dormant?

Here in California it can be hard to decide when to prune. It always seems like I am taking off dozens of blooms and buds. In fact, most of the canes were already to starting to show signs of budding. This does make it a bit easier to prune since I have a clearer indication of where new growth with occur and what direction that growth will occur. You always want to keep growth heading towards the outside of the plant. Too much congestion in the middle and you will invite fungal infections.

I survived this year relatively unscathed. Usually, when I am finished pruning, I look as if I have been wandering through the underbrush for weeks. The temperature was cool enough this week so long sleeves and pants didn't seem to be a burden. I don't have any fancy leather chaps or special gloves, just some sturdy leather-palmed ones that you can find at any hardware store. The only casualty this year seems to be my tennis shoes. The soft soles picked up every sharp thorn and embedded them deeply into the soles. I am still picking them out one by one.

With this job done I took some time to watch the birds at the feeders while the rain and mist started.

Until next week…

Keep pruning!