Why Your Climbing Roses Will Thank You For Not Pruning Them This Summer

Depending on the type of climbing roses you have, they should be pruned once a year in late winter or very early spring, or just after flowering in late spring. Remember to wait until any newly planted climbing roses have flowered for at least two years before giving them a good prune. What you should avoid is pruning your climbing roses in summer, except for some deadheading of blooms and removing any dead canes when needed. Repeat-blooming roses will thank you for not pruning them in summer, most likely with a second flush of flowers, while single-blooming roses will put on a magnificent display next spring if you avoid pruning them in summer.

There are two types of climbing roses — those that bloom only once a season and those that will continue to bloom throughout the summer. Most climbing roses will put on their first stunning floral display in spring, and some varieties will continue to flower right through summer and into early fall. That's why pruning during the summer is not recommended — you might end up removing the flower buds that will give the plant its next flush of blooms.

If you have climbing roses that typically flower only once a season in spring, then these should be pruned immediately after they've finished flowering. These types of roses bloom on old wood from the previous year, which is why you don't want to prune them any later. If you leave the pruning too late, you might remove the stems that will produce the flowers the following spring.

To prune these, you just want to cut back some of the oldest canes and also remove any dead or weak ones. The remaining strong, healthy canes can be trimmed back to a bud if they're overly long, but don't cut them back too far because it's these canes that will produce the laterals from which the flowers will grow the following year. The laterals are the smaller stems that grow from the main horizontal canes. These laterals will grow vertically and produce the blooms. If there are existing laterals along the horizontal canes, you can trim these back until there are four or five sets of leaves remaining on each one. 

Remember to gently train your long canes coming from the base of the plant horizontally, and tie them onto their trellis or the fence they're growing on so that they can produce vertical laterals. This is an important tip for growing gorgeous, towering climbing roses.

If your climbing roses are of the type that will continue to flower throughout summer, you want to prune these in either late winter or very early spring just before they come out of dormancy. You definitely don't want to prune these in summer because you'll limit their continuous flowering, as they generally bloom on the current season's wood. But you can safely deadhead them by just removing the spent flowers to an emerging bud immediately below the flower. Knowing how and when to deadhead roses will ensure that you have plenty of stunning blooms.

When pruning these roses, the first thing you want to do is remove any dead canes as well as any suckers that come from below the graft or bud union. It's important to learn how to remove rose suckers from your rose bush so that your plant puts its energy into producing flowering stems instead. The horizontal canes don't need to be cut, as it's the lateral stems that come from these that will produce the flowers. You can trim these lateral stems back so that there are only three or four buds on each one. If your climbing rose is quite old and the horizontal canes are not as vigorous as they once were, you can remove some of these and let newer canes coming from the base of the plant take over. Just train these newer canes to replace any old ones you've removed.