Question
QUESTION: Hello. I am hoping you might advise me how to get the don juans to bloom some more. I planted them this year and they bloomed beautifully at the beginning of the season. The green growth is great but there are no more blooms. I have fed them with rose food once a month. Please help!

ANSWER: Climbing roses take at least three years to bloom well. The reason is that they are making new growth at the expense of flowering and the bloom is related to the number of leaves and the amount of canes a climbing rose has. Giving a new climber fertilizing every month simply encourages new growth but not flowers. Give the rose another year and you will get more flowers especially if you only fertilize it once in the spring when it starts to put out new growth.

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QUESTION: Please tell me how to prune it since the number of canes and leaves are
important

ANSWER: The general rule for pruning climbers is to leave them alone for about 5 years and let them make as much growth as possible. However if a cane is growing outside the allotted space then you ca cu it back. Hard pruning sometimes tends to discourage some climbers from putting out much new growth. Don Juan should do well in your climate but he has been known to be fussy.

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QUESTION: I am still trying to work with my climbing don juans. is there anything special i need to do this time of year to prepare for winter? i had cut some of the rose hips off by cutting leggy stems. my friend mentioned they were supposed to stay. now I am afraid to cut anything. there are and were so many branches without leaves or flowers.

Answer
It is  okay to cut the hips of as it won't hurt the rose. Usually when you want a rose to go dormant quicker, you stop deadheading the old flowers and you leave the hips on. The main reason for a rose to bloom is to make hips and once that is done they think they have finished their work. So that is why gardeners usually cut off the dead blooms to make the rose think it hasn't bloomed and so has to make another flower to make a hip. Don Juan can get fussy about cold in a winter so I would take some soil, compost or any much you can get in your area, and mound up all around the base to about 12 inches.This will stop the roots from getting extra cold. In regards to pruning. Because Don Juans prefer a warm area, I would wait until the spring and then cut them back. To prune a climber, stand back and look at the rose. See where the main canes are going to and if need be cut those back a little. Then look and see where the side shoots are growing out of these main canes. These are the ones you can cut back harder if you want to. I have even used coloured tape to tag the main canes and it helps me visualize were the laterals are growing off the main canes. Spring is usually the best time to prune a rose because if you goof by cutting too much off, the rose will simply re-grow it during the summer. But if you cut off too much in the fall and you get a nasty bit of cold weather during the winter, you could get die back on the canes.