Where to Cut

If you commit only one fact of this chapter to memory, make it this one:  Where you cut a bloom is vital to the bush it is leaving.  To cut blooms at the right place, you must familiarize yourself with patterns of rose foliage.

Rose leaves usually come in sets of three, five, and seven, increasing in number from the bloom downward to where its stem begins.  Older or particularly healthy varieties produce nine or more leaflet sets.  For this lesson, remember only five.

Properly cut blooms leave at least two sets of five leaflets on the stem from which they're cut.  More would be nice, particularly if a newly planted bush can't yet afford to give up long stems.

Selecting the particular five-leaflet set above which to make the cut is equally important:  it must point outward from the center of the bush.  At the very base of leaflets and the stems from which they grow is an axil that reveals a swelling red bud.  This dormant eye is the beginning of the rose that will bloom some six to eight weeks after you make the cut.

Once you select which five-leaflet set to cut above, make the cut one-quarter inch above the axil at a 45-degree angle with the downward slope toward the center of the bush.