Deadheading Roses

How gone over does a rose have to be before you deadhead it?

Do you deadhead when the edges of the rose have turned brown and the anthers have lost their golden pollen and turned brown and dry? Or do you wait for the rose to look even more motheaten?

I read somewhere that different roses have better scent at different stages, such as when the scent chemicals oxidise, and wonder if leaving a rose for a few days longer has any purpose, such as attracting bees and hoverflies, or if it releases more or less scent?

Does anyone have any secret techniques for the best way to deadhead roses without getting the wrong rose or damaging other nearby roses? I suppose if you pull off the old petals first it is easier to see where to cut.

As a tangent, does anybody here make potpourri with their rose petals, and if so at what stage do you harvest the petals?

 

I don't wait, especially with floribundas, as the dying flowers can hide the opening buds and the dead petals will get stuck on the opening buds. When they're all done, I prune down to the next bud facing in a good direction.
I lightly prune All roses throughout the season. It works for me.

 

I remove the flowers as soon as they start to fade. Most of my few roses only last about three days. I’d rather deadhead quickly to encourage more flowers and not have to expend energy collecting petals from the surrounding area .

 

The roses I was deadheading today are floribundas, and there are a lot of buds on the same bunch. I found it a bit tricky to prune individual flowers in a bunch without causing other flowers to drop their petals. There were dropped petals going everywhere. The wind and rain of the past couple of days has weatherbeaten roses a bit.

 

Use some small scissors. They'll do less damage than your fingers. If they drop their petals, they were going to go soon anyway.

 

For floribundas (or "floribunda" as I actually only have one), I wait until the cluster of flowers looks spent overall and then cut the whole thing (I don't mind a few petals on the ground).

 

I do the same as @CostasK for floribundas.
I dead head single flowers when they start to look tatty.

 

I do find it fascinating how different we are. I love seeing rose petals on the ground, to me it’s part of the summer abundance.

I usually deadhead just as the petals are about to naturally fall. I just drop the spent flower into the border. We have one rambler which has dozens of tiny flower heads in each cluster, I cut back the whole cluster when it starts to look spent. For smaller clusters with larger flowers, such as those on Tottering by Gently, I snip off each flower once faded so I can see its neighbours the snip off the whole flower stem once finished.

I usually go down to the next leaf joint when deadheading or for roses which grow really vigorously (here that’s Tottering, Lichfield and Morning Mist) I might go lower down to control the overall height

 

Entirely up to you, carry the secateurs with you and you con do it whenever you feel like it.

The scent may well change as the bud opens and the flower matures. The purpose of the scent is to attract pollinators, not for the pleasure of the human nose, certainly some flowers change scent as the stamen and stigma mature at different times. I don't know about roses from this point of view.
Once pollinated the petals and scent are not needed and the plant's energy goes into producing seed.
I've never had moths eating my rose flowers, snails and slugs yes.
Secret techniques by definition must remain secret.

 

I give clusters a little shake before deadheading, and then cut off any which have lost petals. This also shakes off some of the moisture when it's been raining.
One of my indoor cats has recently decided to eat the petals of Eyes for You. When he is let out in the garden under supervision he heads straight for it.

 

With floribunda roses, is there any merit in reducing the number of buds in a flower cluster before they flower? Would it give better blooms from those remaining? I debud Dahlias but wondered if anyone does this with roses.

 

No advantage that I can see.