In our new home, I've been pulling up a lot of things I want to redo. Of those, the three items I despised most was this enormous grape "BUSH" as one would be hardpressed to call that vine, and two enormous lavender that must be quite old and was all dead on the bottom and the new growth was as tall as my hip.

Once those got dug up -- I found the oddest things underneath. There were four rose bushes underneath.

But with each rose bush was a long maple tree-like branch growing out of the soil (green), and an pathetic-looking blueberry bush...like someone planted all three into all four planting holes -- together!

Who does that!?!

Two of the rose bushes were so diseased looking and with maybe 5-6 leaves. They also had really thin and weak looking stems with none I'd want to save, so I pulled those out.

Two of the other roses -- and I have no clue what kind of roses these are -- I decided to prune down to nothing except 4-5 thick stems, mulch them with Gromulch and then see what happens. (If I didn't prune them now, and to leave them the way they were -- I'd have to just pull them, so it was either prune or pull. They can't remain an eyesore like they were -- not with my personality.)

Now, having done that, I'm curious if I killed them.

I live near Sacramento and it's not going to get real cold here, though roses don't quite grow through our winters either. That said, in my other garden, I would have waited until spring....or at the earliest, prune them down in November or so when it's actually cold. We are still hitting anywhere between 85-99 these days....so it's definitely not cold.

If I did essentially kill them, c'est la vie. But since I don't have any roses and have no plans of planting them -- it would be nice to see at least what kind of flowers they produced.

I did, however, take a few cuttings from one of them and put them into separate pots. :)

Make sure they're watered regularly, and see what happens.

Jeri

The roses in front of my home were deer pruned for years before I bought my home. The previous owner was in her 90s and had stopped protecting them every night as she had done for years.

It was a while before I could install deer fencing up to protect the plants. The deer pruned them any time they wanted. Now, that they are protected, all have come surging back and are over 6' tall.

Smiles,
Lyn