Monthly Archives: June 2014

Pruning At Night

Leave a reply

While at work, I read the weather forecast for tomorrow saying that it’s going to be very windy. Most weather forecast says winds of about 40 km/h with gusts up to 60 km/h but a news report I read says 60 km/h winds with gusts up to 100 km/h (though this could just be an exaggeration).

Anyway, I would normally just ignore this but the problem now is that my old roses are mostly naked with just the top of the stems having leaves and some blooms. With most of them above 5 feet in height now, I was concerned the leaves at the top might act like a sail and topple the rose or break the stems.

So after coming home in the evening, I went out in the garden and did some night pruning to minimize possible wind damage. Any neighbors who saw me might think I’m a crazy obsessed guy gardening in the middle of the night. Anyway, I cut down all roses to about 3 feet in height not caring where I would cut as I plan to do some proper pruning in the weekend. All I’m concerned is to cut down the part with the leaves and blooms.

I will post pictures in the weekend of how they looked like.

2014 Growth Diary – Three Weeks

Leave a reply

As of June 1 2014, it’s would’ve been three weeks since I’ve planted my roses and it’s time to update my growth diary again. This time, I have an update for both the bareroot and potted roses I planted.

Bareroot Roses

The bareroot roses have started to leaf out with Firefighter really growing out leaves. Again, this is probably helped with the warm autumn that Sydney is currently having. It’s technically the first day of winter but temperature is still above 25 degrees Celsius.

Jubilee Celebration 3 Weeks Old

Jubilee Celebration 3 Weeks Old

Nahema 3 Weeks Old

Nahema 3 Weeks Old

Soeur Emmanuelle 3 Weeks Old

Soeur Emmanuelle 3 Weeks Old

Here’s a picture of my firefighter really leafing out. I’m not sure whether this is good or bad for it to leaf out this much this early, so I’ll just keep observing it.

Firefighter 3 Weeks Old

Firefighter 3 Weeks Old

Potted Roses

The potted roses have some new developments as well both negative and positive. The negative aspect is that I needed to cut a stem from each of them due to die-back. Some of the existing leaves have also fallen on. But on the positive side, whatever leaves that remained has grown bigger – it seems that after the initial adjust period – they’ve now settled down and are starting to grow. Well that’s what I’m hoping anyway, we’ll see in the next few weeks.

I’ve had to cut a stem of the Honey Bouquet as the stem dropped its leaves and was slow turning yellow. I’ve encircled the area where the stem used to be. A couple of leaves have grown bigger but they seem to show early signs of Black Spot so I’m thinking that they will fall off soon.

Honey Bouquet 3 Weeks

Honey Bouquet 3 Weeks

Same goes the my Valencia wherein I had to cut a stem too (encircled in yellow) that was turning yellow. Some of the leaves have grown bigger which I hope is a sign that it’s starting to establish itself in the ground.

Valencia 3 Weeks Old

Valencia 3 Weeks Old

I might give another update next week as there are currently heavy rains falling in Sydney, this plus the 20 deg celsius days will probably spur some more growth.