How Short Should Your Trim Back Knockout Roses in Fall?

We have Sandy in Canton, who asks, ‘I need a reminder of how to take care of those bush roses. Big, big bush, but little roses. How short to cut them and when.’

I’m assuming they’re probably like a knockout, like a shrub rose. So usually you don’t want to do much hard trimming. Usually about a third of the plant. Not yet, but more towards after we have a few frosts, more towards like October later in this, you know, after we’ve had a couple frosts and the leaves start to drop, you can trim like about a third. You don’t want to go too much, but you do more trimming in your main trimming in the spring.

So if you kind of want to take it back a little bit to kind of keep it shapely and under control, do about a third this fall and then early spring, like late March, early April, you can trim it a little bit more.

We are getting to that point where things are starting to kind of look a little tired. Things are still still using all that energy in their leaves. So after a few frosts, when they start to drop and go dormant, that’s when we really recommend doing trimming.

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