Spring Pruning Your Roses

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - No, it's not too late to prune roses. I think it's much easier to prune them in the early spring, because the buds are opening so you can find them.

Some roses don't need much pruning, like a lot of the shrub roses popular now - but that makes them good to practice on - they grow back fast and hide any mistakes. Even if you just cut out branches that cross, and clean out the center of the plant, you'll help increase air circulation a lot.

Look for a bud facing the OUTSIDE of the plant and cut just above it. That bud will grow out instead of into the middle of the plant - which makes a tangled mess inside where you can't see the flowers anyway, and moisture lingers letting fungal diseases - like black spot - fester.

You want to prune on an angle - flat cuts let stuff puddle on a branch. Instead, cut on an angle that slopes down and AWAY from the bud - so that water runs off easily instead of collecting in a crook next to the bud.

Reported By Phran Novelli, KYW Newsradio