Rose Gardening Community

I have a couple of 10 yr old Florabunda roses that I've grown in pots forever. Last year I was too sick to care for them and furtilize correctly or anything and they pretty much did their own thing and went nuts. Blooms, branches, new shoots coming up from the soil...you name it, these roses did it. I finally just cleaned them up in fall by cutting off all the overgrowth and they've come back very nicely now, HOWEVER................they both have developed a second knuckle, so there is one knuckle about 3 inches above the soil and another one has now grown about 8 inches above that and to the left. So it looks like a giant branch with a very large knuckle THEN new branches growing with buds and leaves. So............how do I get rid of one or the other knuckle....its very unsightly! I've considered replanting them deeply enough to not be able to see the first knuckle, but am not sure if this will work. I live in the SW corner of the state of WA so its WET and a moderate summer here.

After talking with a friend, I thought that the answer to this condition was this... This knuckle is where the growers graft on a bud union onto the the root stock. Since you have a higher up knuckle, this would suggest that a 2nd bud union was also grafter higher. Now that you say you have had the bushes for 10 years and have never notices the 2 bud unions, I am not certain that this an accurate answer. Without seeing pictures, it is difficult to diagnose the problem.

These two large "unions" as you call them have been there a very long time, but they've not been so pronounced as they are now. They really are large and ugly. I'm debating if I should just throw the buses away and start new or what as these make the bushes look very unsighly. It's kinda like having a broken leg that a doctor fixed wrong, so now your leg is bent in the wrong direction and you are left deal with it.

If I bury the base of them deep enough to not see this "bend" in their upright growth, will they continue to grow correclty and still produce great roses?