I'm not from your zone, but so many of us have felt just like you are now. I pruned mine about three weeks later than I normally prune and we still had a late hard frost that hurt some of the new growth just last week! Thats crazy here in S.C. If your forsythia haven't bloomed yet and you are very anxious I would look at your bushes and see if the leaf buds are beginning to swell up and change color. If they are then its likely okay. Look at your long term forcast too, do you see any more potential frosts coming up? What you really have to worry about is having some more cold weather and having to prune back a second time because of new damage that may result in you having to prune back much farther than you had wanted. I had to do this with some of mine.

No. It won't hurt them if you don't prune at all, although they might not look so good, they will grow anyway. The forsythia is in full bloom here, a good month later than last year. And I probably won't get to pruning until the next week or so. No worries.The ones that are robust will grow and bloom without pruning, and I'll just go back and clean them up.

I'm giving mine another week or so. I have tiny leaves on a few, beginnings of growth on a few more, but I may have lost as many as a quarter of mine, including some I've had 10 years or more. The ones that are showing signs of life are greening up only a couple inches above soil level.

I'm in West Akron, so probably very similar conditions to yours.

Thanks barefootgirl! Yes, we are probably facing the same conditions. Mine look terrible compared to last year. Last year, you could see a lot of green cane left, but this year so much more black or dark canes. Oh, I probably lost a couple of them at least. Oh well, maybe I could plant of couple more if they don't make it but they've been growing for about 5 years so they should be ok.

Like everyone else who has posted, our spring was very late this year, and the forsythia bushes just started blooming last week. Since I have a lot of roses, and lots of roses ordered to arrive at the end of April/early May, I couldn't necessarily wait till the official start of pruning season to cut back all the dead growth, so I started some "pre-pruning" a few weeks ago.

Since there was dead cane back to the protection line on virtually every rose, I just went by and took off the bulk of the dead cane wherever and whenever I felt like it, but I didn't cut into healthy cane until the official pruning season last week. That worked out really well for me, since my garbage cans were filled to overflowing with all the dead canes for the past month or so, and it would have been totally insane to try to remove that much cane in the last week or two. Also, with the worst of the dead cane gone I could then go back for a second round this week and actually see where the live cane was and check out the live nubbins that remain.

You might not need that amount of pre-pruning if your yard is smaller, but if you're itching to get out in the yard and do something productive it's an option for you. The roses totally don't know or care if you're cutting off dead canes and not moving into live cane regions (it's equivalent of doing a hair cut on dead tissue), but it helped me as a gardener.

Cynthia

We have a little forsythia blooming here. It just started on Friday. With the warm temps the last few days, the pruning happened on Saturday. Most of the rose bushes have leafed out. We did do winter protection with mulch, but pretty much had to prune down far. The winter was horrible for most of our shrubs. I think I lost 2 butterfly bushes ( looks completely dead ). We live in Lake County - inland from Lake Erie Hope this helps some!
Lori

I'm in a similar boat here in Metro Detroit. I'm going to take my potted roses out of their winter wraps this week and prune them. They're in the warmest spot in the yard and I'm beginning to see some new growth on them. The rest of the roses in the beds have no signs of growth yet. I haven't even seen any fattening of the buds yet. After I'm done with the pots I'll check again and see if they're showing signs and play it from there. No, the forsythia aren't blooming here either but I figure if the roses are starting to bud out it's time to do it. But with the amount of winter kill I see out there there probably won't be much left to bud out anyway.

Same in Chicago. Probably lost 30 out of 85. Old established rare roses that were my favorites ....of course. I am pruning and cutting back to the ground in most cases. Brought my potted roses out of the garage just in time for last weeks snow. What a horrible year ! Pic of some signs of life while pruning today.

I no longer use the "swelling of the buds" as an indicator as to when I should prune. We generally have a winter thaw at the end of January. Buds are swelling everywhere as if the roses are ready to leaf out, but if I look at the forsythia, it's just sitting there. Sure enough, had I pruned in January, the new growth would have been frozen off in a couple of weeks, when winter came back to town.

However, I often take the time to cut out obviously dead wood from the roses during the warmer temps of the January thaw. I can see the architecture of the plant. If there is any doubt in my mind about a cane, I'll leave it until regular pruning time.

Smiles,
Lyn

I understand that for you, Lynn, but our January thaw is usually only one day at maybe 50 so I never touch anything until April at the earliest. This year it's really late though.

Seil ...

The buds won't swell in one or two days ... lol. I usually don't prune until April. However, this year, the forsythia had come and gone before the first of April. Spring came a month early to my mountains.

I am just doing a very light prune this year as I don't want to encourage new growth because of the drought.

Smiles,
Lyn