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| Courtesy Tagawa Gardens |
Knock Out Roses (Rosa radrazz) are an immensely popular, no fuss, beautiful blooming shrub here in Golden, Colorado. These hardy plants are easy to grow and drought tolerant, come in many colors, and are naturally disease and insect resistant. One of my favorite characteristics of these hardy bloomers is their self-cleaning abilities, knocking off their own expired blooms to make way for new blooms during the growing season.
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| Courtesy: knockoutroses.com |
Although minimal maintenance is required for Knock Out Roses, it is recommended to prune your roses just once a year, as soon as the buds break dormancy after the threat of a deep frost. My roses are just about to this point, so I will be cutting them back toward the end of April. The rule of the “green thumb” is by cutting back an established (third growing season or older) Knock Out Rose in early spring, the shrub will triple in size by the end of the growing season.
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| Courtesy Tagawa Gardens - Tagawa Gardens - Knock Out® Rose in bloom |
Below are some handy tips to follow when performing the annual prune session for your Knock Out Roses:
1. Gather your basic tools: Garden gloves, and sharp hand pruners/bypass pruner. Some folks prefer to use hedge pruners for the larger cuts, but I find that simple bypass pruners are sufficient.
2. Decide how large you would like your bush to be prior to cutting. Keep in mind these shrubs typically triple in size during a growing season. I like my established rose bushes to be about 3 feet tall, so the annual spring prune will leave the stems about a foot long.
3. Cut the stem at a 45 angle at the desired height.
4. Trim out diseased or damages canes. Remove any smaller dead or damaged canes to promote better growth and air flow in between branches.
Happy Pruning!
Sources: CSU Fact Sheet, CSU PlantTalk, CSU Rose Pruning, Pruning
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