Is it Time to do a Little for Your Roses?
Despite the introduction of scores of different flowering plants, roses are still our favourite garden flower. They are easy to grow and will survive neglect although the reward they give from just a little care is staggering. Given minimum attention they will produce masses of beautiful blooms throughout summer and autumn, providing colour and perfume for the garden and house.
So what minimum care and attention do they deserve? You can lavish time and effort on roses but the minimum they deserve is to be pruned once a year, fed twice and sprayed against diseases at least three times a year.
Left unpruned a rose bush will eventually become a tangle of branches bearing few flowers on the top of tall bare stems. The purpose of pruning is to maintain an acceptable shape, encourage new shoots and to encourage the plant to carry flowers all over. Prune bush roses in the spring by cutting out old exhausted branches completely and cutting back other stems by making a cut which slopes in the same direction and about 1/2 cm above an outward-facing bud, usually the first or second bud up from ground level.
After pruning roses, they need feeding. The Victorians swore by animal manure to feed their roses - and there is nothing wrong with it, if it is well rotted, available in huge amounts and you don't mind the smell that lingers for weeks. But you can't be sure if the manure contains all the elements that roses need and they are in the right proportions. Much better to feed your roses from a box. Simply buy a rose fertilizer such as Top Rose and sprinkle some around each plant twice a year - once in March when they are springing into leaf and again in May when the first buds are forming. It couldn't be easier or more effective. Top Rose contains all the major nutrients your roses will need plus magnesium and trace elements for good leaf colour.
When is it best to spray? Nowadays blackspot is the biggest peril of roses and that disease gets inside the new leaves just as they are unfurling. A couple of protective sprays of the new leaves with a rose treatment such as FungusClear, RoseClear 3 or Roseclear Gun! a fortnight apart will ensure the fresh growth has a clean start. Further sprays of Roseclear 3 or Roseclear Gun! during the summer will help your roses be clear of all the major perils of rose growing - blackspot, powdery mildew, rust and greenfly attack.
For good continuity of flowers you must dead-head. Do this by cutting off the old flower just above the first outward facing five-lobed leaf (The upper leaves are usually only three lobed).
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With thanks to The Scotts Company.
Article from John Clowes.
Always read the label. Use pesticides safely.
Roseclear® 3 contains bifenthrin and myclobutanil.
Roseclear Gun!® contains bifenthrin and flutriafol.
FungusClear® contains penconazole.
® and Miracle-Gro and Plus are registered Trade Marks of The Scotts Company or its affiliates.
