Below are a few basic tasks which should be done in the winter.

• Pruning: - In general, we should do very little pruning in the winter until we do our annual pruning in early to mid March (topic addressed later). You should remove dead or diseased canes and for larger roses you can prune them to about 4-5 feet high or remove the long, high canes to help prevent damage. This is not true of climbers, but longer canes should be secured to the structure so they will not be destroyed by the winter winds.
• Fertilizing: - Since the roses are dormant, there is no need to fertilize. December is a good time to add lime as our soils are typically acidic. However, before adding lime it is best to do a soil test, especially if one has not been done in a few years. Indicate that the testing is for a rose garden, and the analysis will done for roses. If required, application of lime is generally about a cup for a larger rose and about 1/3 of a cup for small roses such as small miniatures. For clay soils you can also add about a cup of gypsum for larger roses and 1/3 for small roses. This is an especially good time to add lime, since it takes several months to seep into the soil to the root zone. Thus, the lime will be where it needs to be come Spring.
• Spraying: - As long as the weather stays warm such as this year, we should continue our fungal spray program. Once cooler temperatures arrive, this can be stopped. There is, however, one additional spraying we can do for our roses in winter. When the weather is cool and freezing weather is not predicted for the night, we should apply lime-sulfur to the entire plant and the mulch/soil below them. This will help prevent fungal diseases from returning the following spring. Recommended time is late December to mid January. Roses should be dormant. Also note that the lime-sulfur will kill any new growth; that is the primary reason for doing it in early winter.
• Watering: - Although roses are obviously not growing, they still need some water to help prevent the canes from drying up in the winter. Thus, watering may be required if there is no rain for long time; I'd say over three weeks assuming you have a good layer of mulch.
• Mulching: - Mulching in the winter has the usual benefits of preventing weeds, maintaining moisture and soil temperature. However, it is also critical to help prevent freezing weather from affecting the graft on our grafted roses. There are also two schools of thought regarding the old mulch. Some say remove all dead leaves and mulch to help prevent from spreading disease. However, if you have a large rose garden or many rose gardens, this can be an arduous task. I would say if you had a lot of disease problems this year and want to take all the precautions possible, remove the old mulch and leaves; otherwise you may put mulch just on top of the old. As mentioned one additional critical item is the prevention of the graft union from freezing. For this you will need an airy mulch such as wood chips, but with little fine organic matter. You should apply the mulch in late December when we have had some colder, but not seriously cold weather, not below 20 degrees. This will allow the mulch to help maintain the soil at a cooler temperature. You will need about 3 -4 inches of mulch above the graft union to prevent freezing. In recent years our winters have been quite mild. You may wish to apply a normal mulch level of a couple of inches and if very cold weather (below about 20 degrees) is predicted, apply mulch above the graft union. Note that most freeze/cold damage to roses occurs in March when we have started or done our annual pruning and fertilizing. The weather has started to warm up and we get hit with cold weather in late March. Many rosarians, including myself, have lost roses due to late freezes.
• Rose Review/Selection: - Review what you did during the past year and decide what you want to change and keep as your gardening practices. In addition, look over your roses; now is the best time to decide if a rose should be shovel pruned (removed) or if you want to add a few or many roses to your landscape. Look over the catalogs and pick out roses you think you want to add to your garden. If you want to add roses, but do not want to increase the effort required consider "Earthkind Roses". These roses were selected after many years of surveying roses to determine what roses will survive with little or no care, but still produce good blooming throughout the summer. This includes no spraying for fungal diseases. The ARS Handbook for Selecting Roses, which is published each year, also help provide a good indication of the performance of the rose. A list of lower maintenance roses will be added to the website in a few weeks.
• Annual "Spring" Pruning and fertilizing: - At the start of each growing season we prune our roses except for OGR's or any rose which only blooms in the Spring. Roses which only bloom in the Spring should, like forsythia, be pruned after they bloom. Forsythia can also be used as an indicator - prune when the forsythia in your yard or neighborhood is in full bloom. If no freezing/cold weather is predicted for one week after the first week in March, I'll start pruning my roses. If cold weather is forcasted, I put off the pruning; otherwise, I could have serious damage to many of the roses. After pruning you need to fertilize and mulch the plants. Pruning will help force the rose to put on new growth and it needs the fertilizer to maintain vigorous, healthy growth. If indicated by a soil test and if you did not apply lime in December, you can to apply it now. I also apply a good organic fertilizer such as Purely Organic or Mills Magic. These are excellent, balanced fertilizers. Non-organic fertilizers can also be used, but the organic fertilizer will help maintain the tilth and health of the soil. If you find that the soil is becoming compacted which often happens with clay soils, use an organic fertilizer and organic mulch especially compost or a composted manure. This will not only help fertilize the plants. but also improve the soil. I want to do everything to improve the soil; by doing that, I can improve the health of the roses.