How to remove roses depends on their type, but in general, the easiest way is to cut off the flower roses at the end of the short stem above any leaves. Removing the head can also help your plant produce new flowers, as removing old flowers can stop the plant from putting energy into the development of the seed and encourage it to produce more flowers.
Not all roses need to be deheaded, and some need more care than just cutting off old flowers, so follow the tips below for the variety you grow. Aside from knowing what type of rose you’re working with, all you need is a good pair of gardening scissors to get the job done.
Deadheading Floribunda and Spray Roses
Multifloral roses and spray roses do not have only one flower per stem like other varieties, but tend to bloom in clusters. So, when you do headless pruning, you can cut anywhere along the stem below the entire bouquet.
Deadheading Hybrid Tea Roses
How to perform a dead on a hybrid tea rose is to find the top five leaflets and then cut off the stems below them at the second set of five leaflets. You can cut the entire flower from late summer to early fall, allowing the stems and leaves to grow more, which is essential for roses to enter the dormant winter. However, if you do this earlier in the season, roses will produce more flowers on shorter stems. By going to the head early, you can cut out the best feature of hybrid teas – their long stems – so decide which one you prefer, more flowers or longer stems, and head accordingly.
Deadheading Shrub Roses
Many bush roses, including the famous Knock Out, are cultivated to fall flowers on their own. The good news is that you may never need to chop off these self-cleaning roses, but you may still want to clean them up based on how they look.
Because shrubs only produce flowers when they are newly grown, pruning them will produce more branches and new growth, increasing the potential number of flowers. How to remove the dead heads of knocked roses and other shrub roses is simple: remove the flowers and their short stems.
Tips for Pruning Roses
In general, you don’t need to prune much for most varieties of roses. In the spring, take a close look at your plants and cut off the dead canes (stems) as close to the ground as possible. If you want your rose bush to have an even shape, spring is also the best time to trim the top of your rose bush.
Avoid pruning roses in the fall. Because pruning promotes growth, stop picking or cutting flowers to make a bouquet a few weeks before the first frost date in your area. As the weather gets colder, your roses will begin to dormant, transferring their energy reserves to the roots to help them survive the winter. If you continue pruning throughout the fall, the process stops.
However, it’s a good idea to prune tall modern roses, such as hybrid teas and large-flowered roses, to about four feet in the fall. This pruning is known as “backward pruning” and helps prevent the plant from blowing around in the winter winds.
No matter what type of rose you grow, don’t worry about how to get the rose to die. It’s hard to cut down your plants too much unless you actually start cutting them down. Once the roses have bloomed, walk around the garden with scissors every few days to cut out the withered flowers. This won’t take much time, but it will significantly affect the duration of the roses and the number of flowers that the rose bush produces each year.