Sorry for the late reply, still recovering from Christmas! Personally I don't like to have a certain date to do gardening chores because the weather conditions vary from year to year. For pruning I just like to wait until it's been cold enough for the roses to have gone into dormancy. This year we had a really long warm fall and it took longer than usual.

I've heard that if you prune too soon it will encourage them to leaf out and then get damaged by a late cold spell but here in Las Vegas I haven't really noticed that happening. Even last year when we had that cold week in late winter that damaged the early fruit trees flowers I didn't notice any problems with our roses. This week I plan on doing a lot of pruning including roses and don't expect them to really start growing until later on when it starts being consistantly warmer.

Maria

OK, so I tried pruning them back a little at Christmas and they started to bud again. Decided that it would be healthier to prune them backto about 9 inches and remove all the old growth, did it on Super Bowl weekend. Will see how good they grow this year and report back.

Roses are ready to Bloom on March 31st, pruning on superbowl weekend seemed to be the ticket. Havent fertilized at all, great blooms coming out this week.