GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - Cut the buds off rose of sharon now in Zone 5?

23-10-2003, 06:02 PM

In article says...
The rose of sharon in my garden had a beatiful display of flowers in
the late summer. Now there are hundreds of new buds forming in our
cold zone 5!!! I doubt it can come to flower in time before the
weather turns nasty. Should I pinch off the bud to save its energy to
prepair for winter? Or it doesn't hurt to leave them alone in case
they can bloom?

They won't bloom again this year. I always trim back the rose of sharon
every fall about this time (I'm in zone 5 too). Last year I experimented
and didn't trim hoping they would grow higher and it didn't work. For
some reason they were having problems getting leaves in the spring
forcing me to do an emergency trim. The buds were all dried up at the
ends and no leaves would form less then 4" from the buds. Therefore,
this year I'm clipping the ends with the buds in fall.

I saw one rose of sharon in my neighborhood that looked like it was 20 or
more years old and the people who lived there didn't trim it last year
and the entire thing was dead this spring. I'm not sure if the lack of
trimming was the reason but these plants do die suddenly and trimming
them in fall makes them seem a lot perkier in the spring.