advice please for pruning roses

please could someone explain how and when i prune my climbing roses - i have had them since March and they stand some 6ft tall - they sprouted a good 2ft when i first planted them - but seem to have stopped and look very sparse? There is quite a bit of foliage at the bottom, then the middle has nothing, and the top is very thin.

Hmmm...Hi Denise! Some climbers resent being pruned. My suggestion would be to post on the rose fourm and let them know what kind of climber you have. They are very knowledgable there. ( and here too) , don't want to take anything away from these great folks here, but they are the pros! LOL

Hi Denise, if your roses just went into the soil this year, they need time to settle into the new conditions you have given them, roses need a hole heap of animal manure and compost added to the soil as you prepare it for the plants to go in, when you plant, when you plant, make sure you spread the roots outwards and not just in a clump as in the pot, also add some rose feed or general multi purpose plant feed to the soil around the roots as they really are hungry feeders due to the flower production they do over a season, once the flowers fade, you need to deadhead them or the plant will stop producing any more flowers, you dont say what type of climbing rose you planted, some are not perpetual flowering ones, others flower again and again, also when you deadhead, you have to cut a good bit of stem off, dont just remove the flower, cut the stem back to a new tiny bud that you will see starting to bulge slightly from the stem below the flower, you dont say what you are using as a support for the rose, if it's a rose arch, you want hight, if it's a fan shape you want on a wall you need to prune so the side facing buds are left and all front forward buds/branches are cut away, if it is growing on a piller, then you need to twine it around the piller and as you do, you tie the stems to the piller and remove any that are growing outwards, it all sounds very complicated for a beginner, but without diagrams, it sounds more comlicated than it really is, a book on pruning or rose growing from the librey/book shop will give details and drawings as to how to go about it depending on the shape/size and type of rose you are growing, also soil conditions, this is even more important that pruning for a climbing rose, I find it best to grow some climbers over a low arch so that I can bend/pin the stems downwards, this helps to get the sap to reach the very ends of the stems and therefore they throw out more buds and that means more flower production and new stems, but books give you lots of info to help you get started, you dont want too much hight for the first couple of years or all the old wood at the bottom will not send out new shoots each spring and all the flowers will end up out of sight into the sky, also water them as often as you can in your climate and feed every spring and again at seasons end to get the rose to produce lots of new side shoots to tie to the support, watch out for greenfly and black spot and deal with these as soon as you see them if at all.hope this helps a bit. WeeNel.

Denise,

When: January, or whenever you see buds starting to form in early spring.

How:
1. Have a picture (in your mind or drawn) of where you want your climbers to go. At the base of the plant, cut out any large gray canes that had no bottom or middle growth the past year. Also cut out any weak, spindly canes or canes that rub against other canes. But don't cut out more than 1/3 of the total number of canes.

2. Encourage the remaining canes to grow in the direction you want them to go. Trace downward from the tip to where you had good growth. Every bud will unfold into a leaf, or you can force a branch to grow from that spot by cutting off the cane an inch or so above it. You will want branches to grow outward from the center of the bush, not into it. As you have experienced, climbers grow long, straggly canes with great enthusiasm every year, so you can cut individual canes way back without hurting the plant. Cut each cane at a slant so that water drops don't sit on the cut and rot it. You can prune all of the canes, but cut them back at varying lengths, so that it doesn't look like you took a chain saw to them. I'd recommend leaving at least 2 feet on the shortest canes.

3. Look into why the upper growth this year has been thin. Roses are heavy feeders and sun-lovers. Are your climbers growing into shade? Have you fed and watered them regularly? Do they have black spot or bug infestations? Is the bed weedy?

Stop feeding them 2 months or so before you would reasonably expect frost.

It has been my experience that roses respond extremely well to pruning; you just want to do it at the right time and with care for where the new branches will grow.

Roses bloom in basically 2 ways: some bloom singly or in clusters at the end of the canes. If you deadhead, the cane will enjoy a growth spurt and then produce more flowers. The final rosebush, you will want canes of many different lengths so that the terminal roses will be all over the plant. Others, the roses grow off short stems along horizontal canes. For abundant bloom, you have to tie or peg the canes so that they grow horizontally, say, along a rail fence. Deadheading these will produce more buds on the same stems. These roses, a few long canes in each direction will produce a fabulous show. If you're growing this type on a fan trellis, you will want a few long canes going up with many side branches growing horizontally. You have the chance now to see which of these two patterns your climbers follow. Over the next few years you can train them to encourage blooming in the way they prefer.