Pruning Time

Mid Febuary and your reading a blog about gardening. Well, now is the time of year where you need to spend time in the garden to make sure your spring and summer gardens will look good.

Traditionally, you should prune your tea roses on Presidents Day. Because it's so close to Valentines Day, I wait until I get a nice day so I'm not pruning in a downpour. But the absolute limit is when pitchers and catchers show up for spring training.

Today's salt & peppers are rose buds. Kind of the theme of the blog, if you haven't noticed, that's the point.

We have had some awesome weather in Pacific City this week. I cut the grass yesterday and plan on tackling the roses today. I don't have as many as I had when we were in Lake Oswego. There I had about 20 tea roses and 3 climbers. Here at The Craftsman B&B, I have half a dozen and 2 climbers. All in the back yard as the deer love roses.

Do not compost your rose cuttings! You all know I like to be as green as possible, but roses are the first plants to get funky disease, mold and other nasty illnesses you don't want spread all over your yard via the compost. You may have seen a lot of vineyards with roses at the end of the rows. They do this as a gauge of the health of the vineyard. A rose will show the signs of black spot and other diseases first, so the problems can be addressed before the vines are attacked. Farmers are smart!

If I have time, I will also prune the fuchsia down to the ground, I do this every other year. The ornamental grasses get whacked to the ground and the apple trees get any branch growing vertical pruned.

Then it's chipping time. I grew up in Denver where nothing grows, now I live where you need a chipper to maintain a basic small garden. So get out there and prune your roses down to a few strong canes. Cut just above an outward facing bud and if your roses have already started like they have here on the Oregon coast, don't worry about cutting off some growth. Remove dead canes too, you want a nice vase shape when your done.

If you don't have roses, go get some. Bare root are the best, soak them in a bucket of water overnight and plant. Some come in a box and you plant the entire box. Check out Jackson & Perkins for ideas, and you can get J&P roses at Costco.