Hi Susan, anything with large flowers with many petals tend to be "heavy feeders" with higher water needs than your traditional HT or floribunda. It takes resources to generate larger flowers with many more petals on larger, longer canes.

Anything which generates longer canes, sort of like climbing canes, such as many Austin roses as well as many Bourbons and HPs are good candidates for pegging. Generally, you can "peg" using any method which permits you to bend the cane off the vertical so you more evenly distribute the sap flow ALONG the cane rather than only at the cane ends. It's very much how you train climbers and for exactly the same reason...to provide you an armload of flowers on shorter stems rather than a few blooms on many feet long stems.

You have to look at the growth habit of the particular variety rather than simply state "Bourbons". Mme Ernst Calvat is great for pegging while the bush form of Malmaison wouldn't be as it's more China to floribunda type, bushy growth. Kim

Yes. I've done it several times. It produced massive bloom on roses such as Othello, The Pilgrim, and some others which left alone only bloomed 12 ft in the air. Produced a marvelous ball of bloom on Mime Isaac Pereire.

It took hours. Not a fun task.

After the first big flush, the canes all died back to the highest point, so the plants looked awful.

I am greatful for every learning experience, but this is not one I would repeat.

Jeri

With the exception of into downward hanging flowering clusters on multiflora types, sap generally does NOT flow down hill. When you peg, or train climbers, it is usually best not to train the canes down hill, or you will very likely experience what Jeri described...the canes dying back to their highest point. Kim

I did it once, and after the first bloom is was a mess. However, eventually two of the cane tips rooted instead of dying back, so I got two new roses! It was some sort of as-yet-unidentified-Bourbon which had been growing in our garden for decades, so I was glad to have the new plants.

Jackie

I would have to concur with the others here. I have pegged my Golden Celebration and Graham Thomas and the first season it's marvelous but after that it's a jungle! You end up having to cut the plants way back to let them regrow again. If you really want to try it find something that is naturally supple and will bend and drape gracefully on it's own.

I think, to be honest, that pegging (or even "self-pegging") is a technique that worked wonderfully on large Victorian-Era estates, where multiple gardeners had the time to mess with these things.

I learned from doing it -- and experience is valuable, but other than that, it was a waste of time and rose canes.

Jeri

Last year my new bare root Stormy Weather threw a couple of super thick super thorny canes with ruffly flowers. Different from the smooth green flexible canes with the flowers that looked like the photos of the plant.

After looking at those two odd canes for a couple of months I decided to tie they to the picket fence upper rail. Boy did they not like that! The canes looked "angry" about there new horizontal position, but it is a climber so I figured maybe it would be happy this season.

Flash forward to this spring, those angry fat canes are loaded with fresh growth and I am looking forward to seeing what the flowers look like this year. I think I lost a couple of flushes from tying them last year, but am hoping they make up for it this year. I have seen no evidence of the canes growing longer yet or adding on to the tip of last seasons cane. I bet this one would have died like Jeri's if I had pegged it and pulled the tip lower, but it sure is loving being level.

I pegged Deuil du Dr Reynaud once. It did produce an amazing explosion of bloom so I'm glad I gave it a try. I am also not the slightest bit tempted to ever do this again, and since then I have kept the canes on the short side. If you are intrigued, go ahead and give it a go. It can be fun to experiment. Better to try and satisfy the urge than to always wonder whether you would like it or not.

Rosefolly

I am wondering if that Stormy Weather looking angry meant it was red? Extra thorny, extra tall, unusual flowers.. and angry.
I would have surely thought it had RRD. Happily you report it looks good this spring? normal leaf etc?

Lola, I am in SoCal, so no RRD here that I know of. By angry, it stopped blooming, stopped putting out new growth, the leaves hung droppy. It did not like being told what to do!

But it is happy and pushing new growth all over this year. For what ever reason, on others as well, seems Stormy Weather puts out a bunch of smooth almost thornless canes and then some DNA testers. I would think I was just my plant, but have seen it at a big nursery too.

Well that's good to hear. Glad Sw has adjusted to her new profile.

I agree with what Rosefolly said about pegging: "Better to try and satisfy the urge than to always wonder whether you would like it or not." I want to try for myself. Thank you all for your helpful comments!

I used a modified pegging to save a rose that I was going to shovel prune because it was never a vigorous plant.

I had sited it in a spot where a large fern blocked the light from reaching the rose. When I put a deer cage around the rose, the rose, 'Cardinal Hume', used the cage to help it climb to the light above the fern and then started putting on lots of foliage and bloom.

I decided to experiment with a modified pegging to see if I could get a more vigorous plant. I didn't peg the rose to the ground, but tied it to the deer cage so that the long canes were above the fern.

This year, I made the deer cage much larger and tying the long canes created by the rose while reaching for the light in a more horizontal fashion to the new deer cage and kind of created a shrub rose above the fern. It was like having a new rose. It put out a lot of new growth from those horizontal canes and lots of new foliage and blooms. It even started putting on new basal growth. I think that's because it was getting more natural feeding through photosynthesis.

I can't provide photos this year because a double-jointed starving deer managed to get under the stair rail and down into the deer cage and eat every bit of foliage on the rose.

What's interesting to me, is that as soon as the triple digit temps dropped, the rose put on new foliage and is looking pretty good.

What I learned from my experiment is that it is not necessary to peg a rose to the ground. It will respond well as long as those long canes can be tied into a horizontal fashion. It's going to be interesting to observe what the plant does next year.

Smiles,
Lyn

"And when you are advised to let the shoots grow long and then to peg them down, do not yield; it does not answer. For a year or two, it may look well, but it spoils the plants and is a mistake" (from My Roses and How I Grew Them, by Helen Crofton Milman, 1899, quoted in my The Old Rose Advisor in the chapter on HPs).

Helen Crofton Milman's advice was probably good in 1899 for old roses, but I'm curious about what we can do with the few English roses that have flexible canes. I think it would be interesting to experiment with pegging. Even if it does turn out to be a mistake, that's not so bad. I mean, hey, it's not like trying to get out of a bad marriage ; )

This post was edited by Mountie on Wed, Oct 15, 14 at 15:47

Old post but I will respond with my experiences. Whenever I have a rose with reasonably lax canes I pull them down horizontally to see if I will get laterals. I usually weight it down with fishing line and a sinker or washer or such.
I've also self pegged roses and have climbers and pillars. I've never pegged a rose to the ground. THAT takes up way too much space and I'm trying to conserve.
Heritage and Munstead Wood are shooting laterals. Even some of my modern HTs are shooting laterals.
I agree Mountie, it's fun to experiment and pretty low risk for the venture!
Susan

Most roses, even HTs which aren't "climbing" and whose canes are sufficiently pliable to bend off the vertical, will throw laterals and flower on them. I had a friend here who did it for years so he could cover his stone walls with color. He didn't go for climbers much because he found he got as much color out of bush type HTs as easily and could plant more as they remained much smaller than most climbers did. Try it. You probably won't be able to leave the canes as many years as you might with a climber, but the results can be quite stunning. Kim

I'm having fun with it! Seeing who will and won't. Jude the O is putting them out. Radiance is putting them outâ¦.
Ascot has gone totally nuts!
Susan

Thanks to you all for your invaluable opinions on the subject. I just came across the subject recently when I came upon Mr. Zimmerman's video about pegging. I am thinking of trying it this summer with my Austin's roses. After reading all your opinions, I am reluctant to do it. What I may attempt to do is a combination of pegging and climbing. I have quite a few austins planted in front of a fence which I hoped to grow as a short climber but I may peg as well to see what works. Wish me luck.

I've pegged a few roses. I don't peg them to the ground, but to a lower cane on the rose. It does work best with Austins. I did Tradescant and it was great. But as Jeri said, after a year or two, you have to redo the whole thing. I am trying it again with Heritage, which will just flop and throw laterals anyway. Mine does look like a hoop right now, but plenty of laterals. Thanks to Kim for the botany lesson, that explains why the ends of the canes tend to die back.

I've also done it on a few non-Austins. These are mainly roses that are too big for the spots they are in. One is Caramella Fairy Tale, which was grabbing small children and pets from the sidewalk and Bon Chance which basically took over my front bed and was hiding my Coral Bark Maple. I wanted to move them both this year, but wound up just cutting them way back. We'll see what they do now. However, when pegged, they looked fabulous.

Caramella is a monster here too....Does yours repeat? I keep cutting mine way back too. That that I've got some acreage ALL the Kordes are going out there. Boy, they are HUGE.

Susan

Yes, it repeats quite well. the only drawback on this rose (besides the fact that it is a BS magnet for a Kordes) is that it's not self cleaning and the spent blooms are quite ugly.

I hear ya. Well, it's good to know it repeats because I keep cutting mine back. It is a beautiful rose. Wish there was scent. Not too much BS but then again, I keep cutting it way back.

Thanks Buford for your experience on pegging. I will try it this season. I will most likely not tie it to the ground either. Speaking of Heritage, it is exactly the rose I am thinking of. I have grown it for three years now and it grew one octopus cane last year. It was usually short for me and then this long cane just pop up..lol. I try staking it but it just looks weird with that one long cane while the rest are short. I think it will look nicer pegged down.

Firstly, I'm not so sure this is simply explained due to sap flowing and capillary action. I understand this is a complex phenomenon called apical dominance and has to do with the production of plant hormones which inhibit the growth of laterals when an apex bud is dominant. I'm not sure of the mechanism by which the apical bud 'knows' that it is an apex bud so it produces the hormone to inhibit growth of the lateral buds. Maybe sap pressure is indeed the trigger for the hormone production or maybe pegging inhibits the flow of the hormone to lateral buds. The auxin hormone hypothesis is widespread in explaining how the apical bud inhibits the growth of laterals but I have not read a clear explanation of what exactly triggers it.

In practice I've noticed that the best results come when no part of the bend / pegged branch lies lower than the point where it stems from. Thus, pegging works best if the branch is not bend further than the horizontal or when it does not curve so much that its tip ends up being lower than its shooting point. If this is the case there's a chance, as noticed by other posters, for the end part of the branch to die off.

Does anyone remember a video demonstration (not the Zimmerman one, I think) showing multiple self-pegging ie with every cane tied in to a cane below it, all the way down, all the way round? Possibly at Mottisfont, or Sissinghurst? Results were stunning, if you happen to like massive, healthy, dense, all-over floriferousness of course. And have the time/ energy/ patience/ that willing team of expert gardeners to do it...

I don't remember whether or how they addressed the issue of dying ends, but I'm guessing they would have undone, pruned and retied them every annual pruning-time. Anyway, I'll see if I can find it, in case anyone's interested.

:¬)

I remember a video most probably from one of the places in England you mentioned where roses where re-pegged every spring to newly pruned long shoots from some locally grown fruit trees. The tree shoots where curved and their ends where stuck in the ground making arches for the roses to be pegged on. I don't remember seeing rose shoots being pegged to the ground.

Ah! that makes sense - I think that might be from Sissinghurst. I did just find a thread called 'Growing roses the Sissinghurst way' started by FogRose in June 2011, with a link from there to a newspaper article from early April which described several of their techniques, using hazel and chestnut poles and hoops from their Nuttery...(yeah, the Nuttery of course...mmm!). There were a couple of things in it though that I didn't really understand and think a visual demonstration would be needed - at least for me - to make it clear. I do remember that seeing them do it, they were so methodical and orderly about it, it actually looked kind of easy! You know, that fatal "Oh sure, I could do that" moment...

One thing that may be significant from the article, was that they do indeed prune off the tips before tying in - presumably that affects the plant's hormonal signals to tell it to put out laterals? (Apologies if I'm just repeating what you and/or Kim have already said - I may not have been following the technical discussion as closely as I should) Anyway, I'll keep looking for the video. But maybe not until tomorrow...

Comtesse :¬)

Maybe it wasn't a video after all. Maybe it was a photo story. My memory fails me, I'm over the age that it shouldn't.

Here is how I am planning to try the DA rose Evelyn once it gets large enough to start throwing out the Octopus arms. I might try some of the other DAs that have those type of growth this way as well. It will be a fun experiment :)

http://www.sweetlifegarden.com/2012/02/wonder-of-roses-art-of-pegging.html

Here is a good video on different pegging methods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr3cTEjzrcM