So, yes, you should continue to remove the developing hips as you have in the past. It prevents the plant from wasting valuable resources producing fruit and seeds needlessly, and it encourages the roses to continue blooming. When flowering plants do what comes naturally, and the blossoms lead to fruit formation, there is no cause for concern.
Since allowing roses to set and mature fruit discourages flowering, we deadhead roses and remove the faded flowers to discourage fruit/seed development. So, yes, you should continue to remove the developing hips as you have in the past.
What are rose hips and why are they on my plant?
Rose hips remain on the plant after rose blooms fade. We often don’t often see them because we tend to prune the faded rose blossoms down to the next stem node to encourage more flowers. Rose hips are the fruit, or seed pods, of rose plants.
When should you harvest rose hips?
Some people like to harvest rose hips as soon as they ripen (to beat non-human foragers to the prize?) and others leave them on the plant to sweeten. The choice is up to you, and of course, it will at least partly depend on how you want to use them. We’ll get to that in a minute, but here’s why you should harvest rose hips in the first place.
Should you Deadhead rose hips?
It’s a common practice for gardeners to ” deadhead,” or remove spent blossoms, from their flower beds. That often includes roses ( Rosa spp.), unless leaving the spent blossoms on plants is desirable to harvest the rose hips that follow. Many gardeners may consider a bountiful harvest of rose hips to be a worthwhile goal in its own right.
Can you cut rose hips with scissors?
You can do all of this trimming with a pair of scissors if the hips are too small to use a knife. You can use whole, fresh rose hips, but the seeds inside have an irritating, hairy covering so it is best if you remove the seeds prior to eating. Cut the hips in half and manually scoop out the seeds.