Regional Growing Guide: Mid-Atlantic

Prune Hybrid Tea Roses
Wait until after the forsythia blooms to prune your hybrid tea roses. These particular roses are usually pruned in early spring, but pruning too early stimulates tender new growth too soon in the season. Premature growth is more susceptible to frost or freeze damage during those unpredictable ups and downs of our early spring weather, so be patient.

Unwrap Roses
Begin removing winter rose collars, cones, and similar extra wraps in the later part of March -- or when the last expected snow has melted. This allows time for insulating materials, such as leaves or straw or heaped soil, to begin to dissipate naturally. You want to encourage the rose to gradually wake up along with the season.

Clean Roses
If you didn't get to it late last fall, clean the roses and the rose bed now. Gently strip off any foliage and hips remaining on the plants. Clean up any fallen debris from under the plants. If black spot was a problem last year, remove and replace the mulch under each bush. This helps remove overwintered spores.

Plant Bare-Root Roses ASAP
When bare-root roses arrive, keep them cool, follow the supplier's instructions carefully, and plant them right away while they are still dormant. Frost and cold will not hurt them as long as they stay dormant until planting time. They can tolerate the cold weather and will start growing again when the time (and weather) is right.

Remove Shoots Below Grafts
Many roses are grafted, meaning two rose plants are joined together top to bottom. The desired named variety is growing on the root of a different rose altogether; they are connected at the graft union. (The knobby-looking graft is often purposely hidden underground to protect it from winter's cold.) Shoots originating from below the graft match the rootstock, not the special grafted top, so they should be pruned off.