Rose Bushes That Get Suckers

How suckers emerge

• Most roses are grafted to sturdier rootstock to ensure strength and vitality. Growers graft by taping pieces of roses to cuts they made in the rootstock. Typically, rootstocks, which are a different rose variety than the graft, don’t grow stems or flowers; they merely provide root support for the grafted rose. Occasionally, though, rootstocks have buds that growers neglected to remove completely. Those buds can take on a life of their own and put forth suckers, or renegade bush stems and branches. Rosebush suckers are stems that grow out of the rootstock, rather than from the newer rose. Because the rootstock is so strong, suckers can thrive far better than the younger, grafted stems intended to make up a rosebush.

Understanding suckers

• Left to grow, suckers will weaken your rose bush, as the invader stems consume food and nutrients that the rest of the bush requires. Suckers can even take over an entire bush, given enough time. To spot early suckers on your rosebush, look for young stems with seven leaflets per leaf, rather than the normal five leaflets per leaf of a healthy rosebush. You can also pinpoint suckers by looking for fresh stem growth on the rootstock, which is a thicker, darker trunk that bulges out at the bottom of your rosebush. If your rootstock is completely buried, you may see suckers growing up from beneath the soil near the base of your rosebush.

Treating suckers

• Wearing gloves to protect your hands from thorns, grip the sucker as close as possible to its base. You may need to dig under the dirt to find the sucker’s base. Twist and turn the stem several rotations, and pull down to strip the sucker from the rootstock. The pulling action will create an injury that heals over and prevents regrowth. Do not merely clip off your sucker with garden scissors, because leaving even a tiny portion of the stem intact will encourage greater sucker growth in the same spot during the next growing season. In addition to freeing up food and nutrients for your rosebush, eliminating suckers will thin the bush to enhance circulation of air and sunlight around the plant.

Preventing suckers

• Bury your rosebush’s rootstock well below the dirt’s surface — make sure you can’t see any of the dense, brown trunk of the rootstock above ground. Rootstocks that sustain damage from shovels, hoes, lawnmowers or other garden tools could develop the scarring and trauma that generate suckers. Consider swapping out your existing rosebushes for sucker-resistant rosebushes, including miniature bushes. Also, many current rose cultivators now develop new bushes from plant cuttings, rather than grafting roses onto rootstocks. Avoiding rootstock-based rosebushes eliminates the sucker problem.