So, today I cleaned up my Knockout rose.
Due to the horrendous weather we had, here in the UK, it grew so many blind shoots.
And for the newbies like me, one thing you should never do is feel remorse for these stems!
They do not flower nor do they grow anymore.
They keep taking up food and energy that the plant needs in order to produce flowers so you should snip there off.
I'll attach a photo here of an example of an affected flower bud (Due to the blind shoot taking up what the bud was supposed to use up to make a bigger flower) and another picture of an unaffected bud.

And here's a picture of an unaffected bud:

So I did snip off all blind shoots!
No mercy! >:D
The plant looked a lot more clean without the blind shoots and this will give place for more shoots to grow. :)

If there is one sight I love to see on roses, that is the growth of a new cane.
I love how it is just so thick and red.
You can see that to its left (YOUR right), there is a cane that is not even as thick as a pencil.
Do I cut it down?
Well, I know this questions obvious answer is YES because all the stems it produces have blind endings.

Here's a Kordana, with so many blind shoots.
The reason the pros tell you to cut a flower down to a leaflet with 5 leaves is because cutting the flower at the Peduncle is like a game of luck.
Sometimes you get s new flower (On a very weak stem) or a blind shoot which hardly ever reaches a centimeter.
When you cut it at a five leaf leaflet, vigorous growth is encouraged.

Here's a blind shoot on it, just like the rest of the shoots.

Here is healthy growth with a flower bud at the end. if you look carefully, you'll notice it.:D

so I did snip it right above the healthy growth to let all the food go to it.

Eventually, I did my clean up and got a few flowers to put in a vase. :)

Here's the Hybrid tea rose, "Rosa Gaujard".
It is so small, and one thing I don't like here is that the people trimmed it so short before transporting it and they broke off the new growth. :(
There are new canes, but one lost it's end and the other cane's end is injured but still growing.
I cannot wait for it to flower. :)
I have nothing to say about the shrub rose except for that it is growing so slow.

So yeah, there. I am done :)
What do you guys think?

"Due to the horrendous weather we had, here in the UK, it grew so many blind shoots. And for the newbies like me, one thing you should never do is feel remorse for these stems! They do not flower nor do they grow anymore.
They keep taking up food and energy that the plant needs in order to produce flowers so you should snip there off."

Your understanding of how and why the plant works is a bit "skewed". Foliage does require some nutrients and energy to be produced, but it also creates food. Foliage exists for three main reasons:

1. To create the "siphon" through transpiration (sweating) which draws water and absorbed raw nutrients from the root tips to the growing cane tips. As the canes lengthen, they taper. The adhesion factor of water is that it is sticky, it sticks to the capillary sides, causing it to rise above its own level in tapered tubes. Combine the draw from the stomata (pores) transpiration on the leaf reverses with the adhesion factor of water and you have sap pressure, drawing dissolved nutrients in the water (sap) from the roots to the tops, pushing growth. Apical Dominance.

2. To provide sun shade against the extremes of sun and heat. This prevents the canes from sun scalding, sun burning. Once the cane is sufficiently sun burned, the cambium layer (the plant's circulatory system) right under the bark, is killed. Nothing flows through dead cambium, leading to die back of the tissues above the scalded area.

3. Probably one of the most important, photosynthesis. Green leaves produce food. If they are healthy green, they are producing MORE food than they are requiring. Once they begin requiring more food than they produce, the plant begins taking sap from them, causing them to yellow and usually become diseased due to reduced immune response, before the plant sheds them. The foliage on your "blind shoots" appear healthy, not diseased and appropriately green from your photos. They are producing food for the plant, contributing to its overall support. The smaller buds produced in their area are likely due to the fact they were formed during the period when the plant didn't have as much food production being performed, rather than the "blind shoots" robbing food from the flowering shoots.

Once the total photosynthesis area became sufficient to produce the quantity of nutrition for the whole plant, it began producing the expected flower bud sizes and quantities. Removing the "blind shoots" while that foliage is healthy and producing food doesn't prevent it from "robbing" nutrients from flowering shoots. It DOES prevent it from producing and contributing food to the whole plant, leading to it flowering sooner.

The only reason the rose flowers is to ovulate, reproduce. It is not going to flower if it doesn't have enough food yet. As the food levels approach that threshold, smaller flowering shoots are produced, carrying smaller flowers. As the food levels continue increasing to higher levels, more growth, more flowering shoots, more buds of larger size are produced. ANY green, healthy leaf on the plant contributes to that food production. Remove them if you wish, but you will actually be reducing the plant's food producing abilities by the percent that total foliage area contributes to the whole plant's foliage area. If half the plant is "blind shoot" and you cut it off, you will be reducing the plant's food production abilities by half.

Once that foliage is shaded by new growth (or other plants), its food production efficiency is reduced. More shade reduces the efficiency further. Damage from disease also reduces the leaf's ability to produce food. Once the tipping point where its production is less than its use, the plant will shed it.

To you, your weather has been "horrendous", but to your roses, it has been an opportunity to set the stage for future reproduction. Obviously, there was sufficient heat, light, water and other resources required to produce foliage. A successful plant will not expend that energy ovulating, in hopes of attracting a pollinator when the weather doesn't encourage pollinator activity. If it is too rainy, too cold for the pollinators to be active, ovulating would be a waste of energy. The plant "knows" this genetically. There wasn't sufficient heat or light to push flowers, but there WAS enough to encourage it to increase its food producing and storage capacities, which it did by producing the "blind growth".

The only way you could honestly consider those blind shoots as having "robbed" the plant of its flowering ability is by the amount of raw materials the plant used to create them. But, the plant would not have created them unless it required the extra food production ability to enable it to flower. Kim

Oh mai gawd!! :O
I remember now!
Remember the Wilkinson's thread where I said the food almost killed one of my roses?
It was this knockout.
She shed all her leaves and flowers after what happened which lead to this!!
Thanks Kim!! I remember now!! :P
I drew the conclusion that it was these blind stems because every bud around them looked so small and the buds with none around them looked so big and the buds were always below the blind stems so I thought this was happening. ::
I am a biology student, I am supposed to know all this! How could I forget? :(

Anyhow, I am gonna edit this skewed advice out so nobody considers it.LOL
Thanks Kim!!

The reason I bought this up is because I thought it was the same as the was shoot buds work.
The lower bud will not receive the food where as the one closest to the cut will.
Thanks for the clarification!

I want as much green foliage on my bush's as they will give me. During the heat of the summer I'm not really interested in bloom production. Most blooms are small and end up being food for the Jap. Beatles. I've noticed that on a healthy bush, when it's ready to produce new growth, it will send it up. I have many blind shoots that start new growth on the end of these blind shoots and produce flowers. I beleave a healthy, happy bush will grow and produce flowers as needed.

Shoots go blind because they run short of water or chemical energy. Chemical energy is sugars and starches stored in the tissues below. Sugars and starches are manufactured by leaves in sunlight. The blind shoot now consists of leaves in sunlight, producing food energy for the plant.

A clump of blind shoots on an established plant usually means something is wrong with the underlying cane (canker or winter damage). These canes should be removed as they will never support strong growth and good flowering. Meanwhile they may be casting shade on healthier foliage.

However, blind shoots on a young or weak plant are normal. They are beneficial and should be left alone. The only thing that can build strength for growth in a plant is leaves in sunlight.

In greenhouse rose production, there is a technique called "bent canopy." They break the blind shoots over and let them hang in the aisle to catch sunlight and feed energy into the plant. This maximizes the amount of photosynthesis and increases cut rose production.

Michaelg--apologies to original poster for hijack--I've been on these rose forum boards for 10 + years and continue to learn so much from your posts. Thank you!