preparing a rose bed

21 years ago

I am about to prepare my first ever rose bed and would like to know if I'm doing the right thing or not, any advise is appreciated. I have awful sand so I have wetta soiled it, put blood and bone over that, watered well, spoiled hay over that and watered again. Tomorrow I will order a load of sheep poo and will alternate that with more hay or straw and blood and bone. This I am hoping will break down enough and be half way reasonable in the way of nutrients for the roses to start off with by the time I buy them and put them in. I realise it will take time for the soil to get to a decent state, but is this ok to start with?

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Comments (4)

Fran_C
21 years ago
You are doing the right thing. I live on top of a (small) mountain and the type of soil varies about every ten feet - must have been SOME volcanic activity way back..It can be difficult in the rocky parts,but tackled as you are going to - no problems..

I did just that - killed off the weed with spray, then newspaper, then pea straw, farmyard poo, lawn clippings (a professional mower drops his bagfuls here rather than pay the exhorbitant tip fees)
Then more hay, then more poo, hosed the daylights out of it and waited until it was the month to plant...
I now top up round the roses with chook poo and pea straw, and occasionally, rotted down lawn clippings.
I've seen these raised beds at a TAFE college and wow did things grow in them...
The thing is you have to get the mix quite solid to settle the roses in, so it's important to keep it pretty damps for a while. A bit of stomping helps consolidate.
Roses don't like a lot of air around their feet.
When you have everything blasting along, just keep up the spoiled hay when you need to feed and chuck in the B and B and anything else.
Roses love a good feed.
The bed I planted like this has far too many roses per square inch in it, but hey - no one's complaining and they are all flowering well.
tinahere
Original Author
21 years ago
thanks Fran...good to know I'm on the right track...I grew spuds at tafe this way as part of hort course, the teacher wasn't impressed at the beginning, they managed to get the weediest hay I've ever seen and he used to tell everyone else to weed their patch but would tell me to go and slash!! I got the blame for all the weeds there I think...but in the end he was suitably impressed with the amount of spuds and he went on to use the soil in his next gardening class!! I will spread the poo tomorrow and just keep layering it as you say and see how it goes. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Tina
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My favorite and preferred way to get your soil revivified is to apply LOTS of either composted manure (horse, goat, etc) or straight rabbit manure, composted or not. I achieved a startling change in my front yard from pavement-feeling clayey stuff to an incredibly springy, almost turfy feel by distributing the waste from my 100+ rabbits and then adding redworms. The resulting texture brought in the rest of the native worms, who took care of integrating the top with the old soil, and now I have a yard I could grow pretty much anything in if the dog would quit trampling it. :) My roses and other established plants get frequent doses of fresh rabbit manure and worm castings (rabbit manure won't burn but you do want it away from the stem about an inch for air), and my Queen Elizabeth generally gets pruned down from its habitual 8-10 FEET of height about four times a year. :) BUNNY POWER RULES! :)
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Wow, sumognat! You have your own horse manure factory!!! When I dig my beds, I take out the depth of a shovel and replace it with everything you mentioned. Perhaps if I were younger and stronger, I'd go 2 feet deep, but I feel like a wacko as it is. Though the soil does become black in several months from all the added organics, my big question has always been "what happens when the roots extend beyond the amended area into the native sand?" So I guess I'm saying to go for the 2 feet if your back and pocketbook can hold up. I'm sure you can get good topsoil & compost in bulk. It's cheaper that way. I get my horse manure compost for free from a horse farm down the road. This year she said she "sanded" her stalls more which made the compost very heavy. I know she thought it was a good thing (and I don't know for sure that it wasn't), but I gasped at the word 'sand'. After all, I worked hard to get rid of the sand, and now I'm adding more! I don't know anything about horses or their bedding needs, but I do know the straw will pull nitrogen from the soil so you need to add extra nitrogen. I use a lot of Milorganite. The worms love it. I use Rose-Tone or Holly-Tone because that's what Lowe's carries, but I occasionally get a big bag of Purely Organic from a man in the local rose society. I use cottonseed meal, blood meal on occasion and lots of alfalfa in preparing the bed. Last year I used up a 50 lb bag of greensand in the beds I dug. It adds potassium (N-P-K: 0-1-6). Florida sand is typically very deficient in K. I found a company called Fertrell who had a local rep who sold their organic products out of his home so that's where I got it. I use Mycorrhizae - microorganisms that you add at planting that greatly enhance root growth. I sprinkle them directly on the roots before I put the plant in the hole. I also use "Vitamin B-1 Plant Starter" by Lilly Miller (from Lowe's.) This is very unscientific, but I forgot to use it once and several of my potted up roses withered and died. :(( At least it's cheap. I have limey sand so I use soil sulphur. I mostly grow own-root Old Garden Roses. I have a few on Fortuniana but 20 times as many on their own roots - Chinas, Teas and Noisettes. Hope this helps. Sherry
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Plant them! They will never grow to any size indoors, in pots. Especially pots that small. You don't say where you live so I don't know what kind of weather conditions you're having now but no matter what you have to gradually acclimate them to the outside, like Diane said, by bringing them in and out over at least about a few weeks span of time. Start out with a few hours in shade and gradually longer times in more sun until they are in full sun all day or as long as the bed they are going into gets sun. As a matter of fact you might want to make sure they are sitting in that bed by the end of the acclimation. And you want to be sure that night time temps are staying above freezing every night when you finally plant them. Normally for bought rose plants you don't need to do that but for tender rooted cuttings I'm not sure they could take a freezing night. That is a really small pot too. You may want to pot each one up into a larger pot for the move so they can start to get bigger root balls before they go into the ground.
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Fran_C
21 years ago
If you sweat the hay by wetting it, the weeds will come up, then just turn it over again while they are little.
It's why I liked Pea Straw or lucerne hay, both really good and the seeds i nthem don't worry at all.
Funny we both got the idea at a TAFE college.
the bed mounds they had were fantastic, and everything in the grew flowers and vegiesl ike you would not believe.
tinahere
Original Author
21 years ago
The hay is from last year and has sat out in all weather and hopefully done all it's sprouting, the next lot I will wet then cover though. It sounds like you are a very busy person...how do you find time to get out in the garden?? I have been lucky enough to go part time at work and part time at tafe and I still don't have enough hours in the day....

preparing a rose bed

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preparing a rose bed

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