Pruning in the New Year

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I hope you are all having a marvelous break :D

I've been compiling research on a variety of herbs, vegetables, leafy stuff... when I realized something that I've been meaning to do this winter!

There's a rose bush that is growing over (what was) the cilantro and onion and it needs to get pruned. There really are a multitude of reasons for this: pruning is good for the health of the plant, its stealing sunlight from other plants, and its really prickly and likes to poke people who are trying to get to the bed its growing over. I don't have a direct picture of the rose bush, but I do have a picture of that one spider web that I found on it so...

You can even see a stubborn tomato plant trying to grow on the right side of the picture.

Anyway, pruning is something that is helpful for majority of plants (not just prickly roses) and is something that I've neglected to take into consideration whenever gardening. I definitely will this upcoming year though! One possibility for this year is to prune the tomato plants to ensure the biggest produce (in size, not quantity). Pruning does this since removing extra branches/stems means that nutrients that would have been divided between those branches are now less divided. Back to roses, pruning would mean bigger flowers and less growth (growth as in amount of leaves/stems/branches, not actually growing).

When pruning, make sure to use actual pruning shears or loppers since if you use improper tools it could damage the plant. What you would actually cut would be dead stems, thin/weak stems, and where two stems cross. Pruning should occur before the plant starts budding and after the spring thaw.

I'll make another post once I actually prune the rose bush so that you can see the end result. Hopefully it won't turn out awful!!

Happy Holidays and stay warm :}