Blooms at end of main cane?

[Icmdiba]

I’m so confused! I have a climbing rose on an arch. I’ve watched all the videos and I understand the lateral and main cane thing. But I assumed the main canes just kept on growing until they reached maximum height. But mine get so high and then produce blooms at the end of the main cane. So what do I do then? Leave them to produce hips or prune off this pruning the main cane which I don’t think i’m meant to do.

Its a Generous Gardener that I planted last spring.

thanks!

A photo might be helpful, how have you got it tied in? Has it actually produced any laterals?

my climbing rose has done exactly the same thing. i don’t understand it either !

@Cuppa2sugars glad it’s not just me!

@Crikeyisthatthetime I’ve just had a look. So there were some main canes that grew last year and produced a spray of blooms at the end. I left the spray because I didn’t want to cut a main cane. This year those main canes have produced laterals which have bloomed.

Additionally there is a new main cane, new this year with a spray of buds on it.

It’s on an arch so it’s weaved in and out of the horizontal bars on the arch. It’s probably not ideal and certainly I think would have been easier to first attempt a climbing rose on a wall!!

Yep, I get you, I did exactly the same with my first climbing rose except that it turned out to be a rambler (oops - I blame the ambiguous description on the label!) Luckily it's not a particularly vigorous one.

Anyway mine looks stunning on the arch even though it's a bit more faff than I anticipated, and it sounds like yours will sort itself out. I suspect though that if you prune off the end of the main stem it will produce laterals quicker, but who has the heart to prune the roses off!

@Crikeyisthatthetime thanks. My canes seemed all a bit tangled up which I’m not sure how to handle….arch is probably too small in retrospect. And the mains are never going to be 45 degrees but hey ho!

So maybe is it normal for main canes to bloom? I wonder as it gets older it will one day produce longer main canes? Some are almost at the top of one side of the arch but not over the top. But they won’t grow more because of the spray at the end (which is no dead rose hips from last year).

Your rose might have reached its natural height then bloomed. So then that stimulated the laterals to grow the following year. There's something called apical dominance in plants, the leader produces a chemical which inhibits laterals from growing while the leader is still growing. That's why we pinch out the tips of fuschias etc to make them bushier. NB I'm not an expert!
I'm planning on pulling a couple of main canes out from my arch and cutting them right down to below knee height because I want it to produce more stems from lower down next year. The closer to horizontal we can keep the leaders the more likely it is to produce laterals. I let a couple of mine grow too straight(didn't spot them until I trimmed back the Mahonia) so now I've got to do something.
Mine grow long enough to go over the top of the arch but then it's a rambler (Frances E Lester). Once it hits the top of the arch and becomes horizontal it flowers like mad.
Some climbers don't actually grow very high, do you know the name of yours? You may need another one on the other side.
Also the leader should produce secondaries one of which may grow longer. But I'd be deadheading the dead roses anyway.

Sorry that was much longer than I realised!