There are a list of plants that I have for a cozy cottage indoor and outdoor spaces & climbing roses are at the top. We have been collecting them & placing them around the farm including here in the kitchen garden around the greenhouse. We have been training them with a diy system that we made & we have yet to add to it this year with the new growth, but the messy growth is so cozy cottage garden right? It would be nice to be able to use the door though right?
How it Started:
This was taken in 2021 when we painted the greenhouse floors.
How it’s Going:
We clearly need to train the new growth still this year, but I wanted to shoot it in it’s natural gorgeous state before we pruned it back & tightened it up.
The goal of the climbing roses:
We planted these bare root climbing roses [HERE] about 3 years ago, planting them on each corner of this cute little greenhouse right off our kitchen garden.The goal is to walk through a rose archway when you enter the greenhouse. We planted, pruned, and trained these climbing rose to hopefully one day fully wrap this greenhouse, pruning away openings for the windows and door. People often ask what we do to train our roses and we take a few different approaches but we feel one has been very successful for us, and causes no damage to the plant.
How we train & Prune the roses:
Very early-early spring we prune aways dead runs, shoots that are crossing each other, and identifying the main steam, ensure it has enough energy to continue growth. Lastly we prune and shape the plant to ensure it doesn’t encroach the main passage way and grows in a way that will follow the outline of the windows. We have installed eye hooks to the greenhouse with taught wire attached to them over the main base of the plant to keep it close to the greenhouse & trained up. Our little trick to shaping and training the coming rose to install little electrical NM cable staples with the plastic sleeves and pin nails.
The non-metallic cable staples come in a few different sizes and are very inexpensive. An entire rose bush takes between 5-10 staples if places strategically, and you can buy a pack of 25 from Home Depot (link) for under 2 dollars. In early spring before heavy growth happens, we will find shoots as big as your pinky finger, and nail in places this plastic staples. We will help guide the plant around doors and windows, and prune them to promote the continued growth of our choosing. The reason we love these staples is the pin nails are so tiny they are really easy in nail in place, and the plant sleeve is flat on the bottom side, mitigating any type of gauging or scraping of the plant as it grows. Also, the nails being so little, it takes little to no effort to pull them out and slide them up the bush as it grows. And if the plant outgrows the staples before you can get to them, we have had the bush simply push the staples out on top the floor, a great signal to retrain the plant. I included these items we talked about & more rose care/climbing rose items in my “rose” folder [HERE] for you. Hope that helps!
You can see in the photo below the eye hook & the wire need to be tightened & re-wrapped around the rose bush to bring it in. We will also need to add new new eye hooks & wire moving up the greenhouse for the new growth:
Other Training Methods We Use:
We do follow more common ways to train plants. We have installed fence staples, nails, screws into the the side of the greenhouse and drawn them tight to the greenhouse with baler or landscape twine. Tiptoes are another great way to tell the plant where you want it to go, just down draw down not he zip to too much. You want the plant a little moment for window nights and growth.
Each year is a mystery when it comes to growth and size, so we take it year by year, and this year or smaller side is growing at a crazy rate. We do want to bring it over to the garden wall, so we are coming up with some fun ideas on how to get the roses all the way around.
I hope you enjoyed this quick little tip on how we train our roses here at White Cottage Farm, and can find these tips helpful in your garden. Keep up with us daily on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok. Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today and every other day, it truly means the world to us.
xxLizMarie
