VI PRUNING 101 



amateur will not be doing wrong if he picks his days 

 and gets through as much as he can whenever it is 

 warm and fine. If some are pruned in the first week 

 of the month and some in the last, bitter weather 

 intervening, but little difference will be found in the 

 time of flowering. It is best to leave Tea Eoses in 

 the open undisturbed till April ; and it is safer to leave 

 the early-flowering Hybrid Teas also till that time, 

 especially in situations liable to May frosts, for it 

 is the early strong shoots whose buds are already 

 formed which suffer most in such visitations. On 

 the other hand, in early seasons, like 1893, Eoses 

 which have made some growth at the top are apt to 

 " bleed " when pruned severely, especially where old 

 wood is cut into. In some cases the soil around 

 the roots is kept quite damp from this cause for 

 some days and the matter looks serious but does not 

 often prove to be so : the cut heals in about a week, 

 and the subsequent growth does not seem to be 

 impaired. 



As to the method, we will take first, as being the 

 most complicated, the case of summer Eoses, H.P.s, 

 and other fairly strong varieties where the object is 

 to form handsome plants for general decoration with 

 a quantity of good blooms for cutting. 



The first care will be to pull up and test all stakes, 

 as recommended on p. 37, and the next to cut out all 

 the dead wood, and all wood however thick and old 

 which, as shown by the small growth made last 

 season, is becoming weakly in comparison with the 

 rest of the plant. Now we can study the whole and 

 see what we have got left. Our object is to form a 

 well-shaped head or plant, and by " well-shaped " I 

 mean that the plant itself should be of the even 



