Where to Cut

Dormant bud eyes will be readily apparent to you if you have stripped the bushes of foliage two weeks before pruning.  Cuts are made a quarter inch above bud eyes, pointing outward from the center of the bush in the direction in which you want new growth to develop.  Angles formed by cuts are ideally 45 degrees, with the downward slope toward the bush's center.  Learn what a 45-degree cut looks like and eyeball your cuts.

Some experienced rosarians recommend never cutting into main canes; I am among them.  The snapping procedure recommended in Chapter 4 was originally devised to avoid having to make cuts into main canes.  Seeing what snapping new canes can do for bush development has persuaded me to recommend it for everyone.  Once you do it, you won't have to worry about cutting into main canes; multiple laterals will develop from your snaps, and you can cut into those laterals.  If main canes are allowed to produce candelabra growth either because you didn't spot their development in time to snap them or because they came late in the growing season, you will have to cut into them.  You have no choice, and it may very well not matter, especially if your bushes have been subjected to freezes.

Often a dormant eye pointing in the right direction is nowhere to be found.  Do one of two things.  One, make whatever cut you decide on higher than you'd like.  This will allow for development of the bush and, more particularly, give time for buds to continue swelling and become apparent.  Later, when they are apparent, you cut to the right one.  Two, make cuts that leave quarter-inch stubs of old stems.  Dormant eyes abound just under the junctures of stems and what they grow on.  You will leave a "knobby" end to a cane or lateral by making these cuts, but growth coming from them will disguise it soon enough.  It looks strange when you first do it, and not as clean or ideal as a cut above a bud eye, but it really will work.