Topic: do i need to prune

[debster]

My fuschias and rose bushes now for winter? if not when and how do i do it?
thank you  ;D

[calendula]

personally i would prune fuchsias when the seed pods have dropped or finished as the birds like them and with roses pruning anytime during the late autumn and before the sap rises is the best time, preferably February - that's what i do anyway

[valmarg]

I leave fuchsias until early in the new year - late March early April.  The growth affords the plants frost protection.

valmarg

[debster]

ok thanks so much

[PurpleHeather]

Purists wont agree but you can hack down roses and fuchsias when you want to.

They come back.

I dare say if you have a rare type which is delicate, it could do harm but I find both these plants very hardy.

Years ago gardeners world did a test on three rose beds.

1 Total pruning by a top gardener
2 Pruned by a total amateur
3 Hacked down by a chain saw

The following year, the best displays were

1 Hacked down by a chain saw
2 & 3 a tie by the pruners

 

[grawrc]

I don't know about fuchsias but they say you should get your worst enemy to prune your roses! Mine are still flowering so I'll leave them till they've finished and then tidy them up. I usually do the main pruning in February /March but this year I'm doing autumn pruning since some of them  - especially the ramblers are seriously overgrown and once the winter weather comes will get blown about and broken if I don't prune now.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Bob Flowerdew advocates a crude hack for roses. I don't do anything but take out the tips on mine, but they're still fairly small (mostly) and I want growth. I do have one rampant thing at the back that I'm not quite sure what to do with, maybe move it and see if it'll grow through a tree.

[grawrc]

Yes I've got a Rambling Rector to reduce to size and a Félicité perpétue that I'm thinking of moving. Both very beautiful but outgrowing their allotted spaces. Apart from those two I'll be removing thin wood, crossing branches, opening out the centre and cutting main branches back to an outgrowing bud. The ramblers just get the hedge treatment.

[Hyacinth]

I don't 'do' flowers but most of my 'laydees' do :(

I'd read/heard about the drastic hack-saw method with roses & suggested trying it as a last-ditch attempt to revive her roses, well-past their sell-by date, I'd reckoned, so did it late autumn 2 years ago.....nothing to lose cos these were going to be hoiked out in spring if it didn't work....

Complete success! They're still going strong and, indeed, now in their THIRD flush this crazy year 8)

Takes a leap of faith, tho, if it's something you really really want to keep?