Trimming a Knock Out Rose in the Fall

First of all, this one’s from Ann. And Ann says, how do you recommend trimming knockout rose bushes in the fall?

Great question. So a lot of people get, in my opinion, a little too aggressive trimming the roses in the fall. It’s okay to do light pruning on them. If you’re taking back, you know, a third of the new growth from this year, you can do that pruning, fertilize them. You’ll encourage more growth to come out. Don’t see any time in the next two weeks where we’re even remotely close to a frost.

So we do have probably three to four weeks left of the growing season. So doing a light pruning, fertilizing will encourage a rebloom. You should have time to get that rebloom to still happen. If you’re going to do a major hard pruning on that plant, that is something I would definitely wait until the end of March, beginning of April.

 But light pruning, good fertilizer after the light pruning, you should be fine. In the spring, if you do a hard pruning on them, you want to take any of the dead canes out. So roses always have canes that live through the winter. You want to remove some of those dead canes or all of the dead canes in the spring and then also fertilize it really heavily in the spring with a good all-season green fertilizer pellet. It’ll last for six months.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).