Peace climbing rose

Hello everyone, at the beginning of the season I planted 2 climbing Peace Roses from Bare Root from David Austin.

They started to grow well and climbed up my two fan trellis training them straight up the fans. See pic. When they reached the top I pruned them thinking they would start to sprout up each stem and create buds. This did not happen, they just kept trying to grow from the top. All season I’ve had no flowers.

I read that I should have trained them horizontally! I’ve fed them. Watered when needed. They have full sun for most of the day. What have I done wrong please. Should I prune them back to the ground and start again next year? The leaves are dying off now.

Any help and advice will be very appreciated.

Paul

 

Apical dominance is your problem, I think. Here is a description of it.



In other words, A vertical plant will want to grow vertically. Side shoots, which are horizontal and not vertical, will not be encouraged. Flower buds on your rose are side shoots and by letting the plant grow vertically you are keeping them suppressed.By forcing the plant to grow horizontally, the side buds suddenly become vertical buds and so the flowers are encouraged.Upwards.

 

I was thinking that might be my mistake. The stems are now very strong and not really trainable anymore. Should I prune them back hard in the spring and then train the new shoots horizontally up the trellis?

 

I’m not really the person to ask as I rarely make plants form shapes that they would rather not make. But you could try doing things very very slowly with the existing stems. Just bend them a tiny bit, one week at a time, noting when they appear to be more strained than is comfortable and allowing them to adjust to their new position for a while.

 

Just to intervene here, this has nothing to do with apical dominance in this case. Climbing Peace rose only flowers once in summer, that is, it flowers on old wood that you've already got there, so on no account should it be cut back down as you would be cutting off next years blooms. Just leave it as it is. You may get an occasional rebloom in autumn. This is the reason why you did not get any flowers this year, its first year. Good luck with it.

 

Well, two things can be right at the same time, I suppose.

There are any number of people who have voiced their opinion online and in books that a bent rose stem is more productive than a vertical, untrained one.

Like this person, for example.

Training climbing roses

And I appreciate that this article refers to climbing roses, but the same thing applies to any rose with long stems.

 

I'm not disputing training the stems horizontally for more blooms, it's just that the member was concerned why his rose hadn't flowered this year and how to put that right. As I explained, it wouldn't have flowered this year regardless of the way it was trained.

Personal opinion, but climbing Peace is not a rose I consider worth growing these days, to be quite honest, due to its poor rebloom and excessive growth. For that small trellis work on the wall, the usual 'Peace' rose would have been better. It would take longer to reach the top, but it's capable of 5-6 feet in time, and reblooms constantly through summer.

 

I've had 2 climbing Peace roses at 2 different houses. Both were disappointing. The flowers were lovely but there weren't very many of them and they grew too high up. I did manage to bend a couple of canes sideways which flowered better but they get very thick and stiff if you don't do it early enough. Also they hardly grew any new canes.

 

Thank you everyone for your replies. I also have two Peace Rose bushes that have flowered really well all summer. So that makes sense. The reason I picked Peace climbers is because my late grandmother grew one and it trailed right up the garden for at least 30 foot. It bloomed all summer prolifically. I have made rather a mess of this as I’ve tried to train them towards the end of the season making them a little messy. Maybe I’ll sacrifice a year and cut them back and train them better ready for the following year. What do you think?

 

I don't grow roses @tuxiow , but I grow other climbers, and I think a big part of the problem is those fan shaped trellis supports. They're not much use for anything that wants to be a decent size - more suited to smaller plants in containers, and annuals are a better fit for that.

If that's under a window [I can't tell properly from the pic] then it may not be ideal for a climbing, or larger, rose anyway unless you can put a better support or wires in place. Proper trellis or battening for example, especially if you want it to look better when the plants are dormant.