How To Tend Your Roses
Growing roses really isn’t very hard to do. Your roses can be healthy and beautiful for a long time as long as you follow the basic rules of care. Making sure you’ve chosen a variety that’s suitable for your zone is the first step in having healthy roses.
A particular type needs to be hardy to your zone otherwise it won’t survive. You also need to ensure that your roses get plenty of sun. If you want them to do really well, then make sure they get more than 6 hours of direct sunlight everyday.
Described to be greedy eaters are roses. Since they take large amounts of nutrients from the soil, what you need to do is feed them often but lightly each time. Two months before the first expected fall frost is when feeding should be stopped.
You should feed roses with nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Hybrid tea roses, climbing roses, grandifloras, floribundas, and poluanthas all need about 1/2 cup of 10-20-20 or 10-20-10 on each bush about three times per year.
They should be applied once in early April, late May, and early July. You could also add 1/4 cup every couple of weeks though July. A tablespoon of 10-20-20 or 10-20-10 in early April is what miniature roses should receive.
Then they should get a soluble 20-20-20 fertilizer in early June. About 1 cup should be poured around the base of each plant. They should again receive this application in early July. Standard garden roses and shrub roses don’t really need that much fertilizer.
Once per year, sometime in early spring, give them a good application of general purposes 20-20-20 fertilizer. After the first round of blooming is done, you can apply another dose of fertilizer if you have repeat-blooming roses.
Developing a special alfalfa tea recipe for roses is the American Rose Society. Generally applied in fall, they release a special growth hormone in your roses. If you want to make it, what you need to do is fill a 32-gallon plastic trash can with about 10 cups of alfalfa pellets and water.
Stir it daily and steep this for about 5 days. Two cups of Epsom salts, 1/2 cup of Sequestrene, and a trace element elixir of your choice should then be added. This mixture will start to smell after about 3 days so keeping the lid on it would be a good idea.
A gallon of this tea should be given to large rose bushes and for mini roses, about 1/3 of a gallon. To make a second batch, add more water to the pellets in the bottom after all the water has been used up. After the second batch, discard the pellets.
Roses should be watered deeply. They should get at least an inch of water every week. As long as you have given your roses plenty of rich organic material in their oil, you shouldn’t need to give them more than one inch per week.
To avoid encouraging shallow roots that can cause your plants to die during draughts, do not water frequently and lightly. In order for leaves to be dry before dusk, always water in the morning or your roses can get diseases or molds.
Roses need to be groomed regularly. You should remove faded flowers, trim away dead or damaged branches, and prune away brown leaves. For the first two months after you plant your roses, you should remove all buds to help establish the plant and encourage it to grow.
You need to leave as much foliage on the plant as you can when the blossoms are first cut off. If you see any branches that show symptoms of disease, cut them back to the healthy part of the plant, then dispose of the affected part in the trash, away from your garden and NOT in a compost pile!
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