Get out in the garden and prune, baby, prune

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA (Jan. 14, 2025) — This January feels more like spring, and we have some timely garden chores that need to be done.

It’s the time of year to focus on your roses, deciduous fruit trees and acid-loving shrubs.

Prune your rose bushes, groundcover roses and rose trees now. Rose pruning is easy. An annually pruned rose should take less than five minutes to prune.

As you approach a rose bush to prune, look at the bottom of the plant. Do not worry about all the buds, blooms or leaves still left on the bush – begin at the bottom. A well-pruned hybrid tea, grandiflora or floribunda rose should have three to five nice, straight, clean canes without any leaves. Strip off all leaves from your rose cane.

The object of pruning is to remove most of the past year’s growth, all the crossing canes and lateral branches.

Make all your cuts at a slight angle, right before a swelling of growth. If you look closely at a rose cane before you make the cut, you will see a seam with a swell. This is where the rose wants to grow.

I do not tell people how many inches of cane to leave on a rose because it really depends on the amount of room you have for your rose to grow. If you have limited space, then cut each cane further back. If you like your roses to be tall, then do not cut down as far.

Rose trees should be pruned the same way as rose bushes. Remove old canes, crossing branches and lateral branches. But leave more canes on the plant so they will look fuller. And, cut your canes further toward the heart of the head to encourage leafy growth.

Groundcover roses such as drift, carpet roses or mediland style do not need the same amount of attention. Reshape groundcover roses, bringing them down and in. If the groundcover style roses are out of control, prune more severely. With a newer installation, the pruning will be lighter.

Fertilizing

Fertilizing roses is especially important. I have been sharing the same recipe for more than a decade. Use it for established ground-grown hybrid tea, grandiflora, floribunda or tree-shaped roses.

After your winter prune, give each rose:

• ½ c. 16-16-16 multi-purpose fertilizer
• ½ c. bone meal
• ½ c. granular iron (which will be very hard to find this year)
• ½ c. alfalfa meal

Work into soil along drip line and top-dress with an inch layer of chicken manure and water in.

Container roses get half a dose of each product. Give groundcover roses only multi-purpose fertilizer and iron.

This sounds like a lot of products but imagine how deep the roots of your rose are. Do not premix a batch of products. There is a reason for each ingredient and the quantity. The 16-16-16 is a multi-purpose fertilizer, which acts like a balanced meal. The bone meal is a source of phosphorus and will encourage bloom. Granular iron keeps your rose leaves green and free of chlorosis. Alfalfa meal will stimulate new cane growth.

Since 2020, many folks have turned their backyards into orchards. All varieties of stone fruit need to be sprayed now with a copper fungicide and again once the buds swell for peach leaf curl. (Yes, peach leaf curl affects more than just peaches.)

Peach leaf curls make its presence known in the late days of spring; you may notice blistering on your foliage that is red to orange. Peach leaf curl is usually mild the first season but can come back strong if left untreated.

The only way to cure peach leaf curl is while the trees are dormant. Apply now and again once your peach, plum, nectarine or apricot has fat buds. Do not spray a tree that’s already in bloom.

January is also a good time to apply a dose of organic fruit tree fertilizer and top dress the soil beneath the drip line of the tree with either manure or earthworm castings. Fertilizer takes six weeks to activate and travels up the body of the tree, so it is OK to apply now. You won’t see results until March.

Azaleas and camellias need two types of fertilizer currently. Use fertilizer for blooms such as 0-10-10 and a dose of granular iron to help the plants green back up after the winter.

Blue mophead hydrangeas need an application of aluminum sulfate. This product is not a fertilizer, but rather a supplement to help your hydrangeas stay blue. Resist the urge to prune or fertilize your hydrangeas until March. They are summer plants and should look poor this time of year.