After the long dry spells interspersed with brief torrential rains that we experienced this summer, several days of cooling, refreshing rain seemed like a gift from Mother Nature, but like all gifts, this one lost its fascination for me after about four days of being confined indoors. Even when the rain stopped, the garden was too wet and muddy for me to weed the jungle that appeared to grow up overnight. Instead, I decided to sort through and discard outdated files, where I found a question sent to me several years ago by a friend asking how and when to prune Knock Out® roses.
My recommendations included: Remove dead, damaged, or diseased canes any time of year. Cut Knock Out® roses back in late winter to early spring to about 12 inches tall. They are supposed to triple in height by the end of summer, so that by August or September they should be about 3 feet tall.
This is still good advice, but I find it interesting that most of the pruning and care articles on Knock Out® roses are p...