Lazy rose gardener supports
Hi folks
With going on 1000 roses or more, I just can't spend that much time fussing with roses. They get pruned once in spring (with backup pruning a second time), fertilized with alfalfa and maybe Ironite or 10-10-10 once a year, and watered when and if I feel like it. No sprays - that's way too much like work, so they sink or swim on their own. I can get away with a lot of benign neglect because I have good loamy soil and usually enough rain to get by. Of course we also have extreme contrasts in temperatures (cold winters and hot summers) and tons of wind year round.
So I'm thinking we need some posts for other lazy gardener tips to keep the fun in rose growing. I'd rather enjoy the flowers than fuss over the plants themselves. I'm also way too lazy to move roses once planted, so if I end up with a rose that's too big for its spot I have to come up with easy ways to keep a thug from flopping over its neighbors or prop up sagging canes. Oh, and it has to be cheap too - I'm saving my money for buying more roses, not complicated supports.
So here are some ideas that have worked for me. For starters, those rolls of green wire fencing that come for about $15 per roll (maybe 20' long and 18" high) are multipurpose rose and plant supports in my yard. I have several rolls I've cut and made into circles to fit around a rose or other floppy plant, and you then simply hook the wire ends back into the other side of the plant around the rose. Minimal blood loss compared to fitting a tomato cage around a rose (another nicely cheap solution), and the green fencing totally disappears into the rose once it's growing. Here's an example of that green fencing ready to support a peony when it grows up. There are actually two rows of the green fencing hooked into the more substantial vegetable fence behind it for a little bonus support.
And here's Bad Worishofen totally obscuring the short green wire fence keeping her a little tidier:
The short green wire fencing also comes in useful as, uh, fencing (though the rabbits don't seem to appreciate what this is supposed to mean). I put the fencing around one bed in the back to discourage the rabbits (but they just come through the 4" slats in the neighbor's black metal fence to the back). I also use the fencing in other beds as a lazy way to mark off the edge of the bed and hold in the leaves I dump in the beds for winter protection. Through this, I discovered the benefits of that fencing for disguising my mistakes at anticipating rose heights.
Both Dame des Chenonceau and Champagne Moment were roses I anticipated to be 3' and they turned out to be massive 6' sprawlers. What's a lazy gardener to do when they're planted right in front of the bed. I tried one year to keep them pruned to 3' but HA de bloody HA. First of all they sulked and wouldn't bloom at that height, and they keep sneaking out these massive canes when my back was turned. Enter the green fencing that so conveniently ran in front of them, and I started instead tucking those massively long canes into the 18" high fencing loops to grow these roses sideways as if they're climbers. Boy did that work - you'd think I planted them this way on purpose (more HA, like I plan much anyway). The massive white (CM) and pink (DdC) blobs at the front of this photo are these roses enjoying their floppy glory (you can see the wire fencing at the bottom left below CM:
The same fencing also supports actual climbers that refuse to climb where they're supposed to. Rosarium Uetersen was supposed to climb up the side of the blueberry cage behind it, but it kept snagging holes in the bird netting and pulling the whole cage sideways with its stiff canes. Well enough of that! I just let him drape himself over the fencing, and now I deliberately attach his canes all along this fence each direction:
I've also used this fencing to "peg" down 5' high one-cane wonders at the front of other beds, and I'll run out for a photo this weekend since you can see the canes more clearly without leaves.
For taller roses that need support, I cut off similar lengths of the 3' high green wire fencing that's made of stiffer wire. This comes in rolls too (a little more $) and it doesn't have the wire ends open at the bottom to stick into the ground so you might need earth staples to hold it down if you have a lopsided rose that pulls it sideways. I find that the circle sets pretty nicely on the ground on its own most of the time, and of course that's the lazy solution. Here's the fence around Scepter'd Isle showing how many of the canes would be flopping over without the support:
And here's Scepter'd Isle in bloom - I literally can't see the support in this photo but at least part of the bottom of the photo is low enough to be supported by the fence:
This is an example of what the high green wire fence avoids -
clematis trying to commit rose-i-cide on poor Scepter'd Isle. Usually
she's 6' or more, but she's barely 1-2' off the ground without the
fencing:
Here's a combination of the high green wire fencing and shepherd's hooks that are needed to contain a chaotic combination of clematis, roses (Queen of Sweden) and climbers (Jeanne la Joie). The shepherd's hooks clearly pass the lazy test for rose supports - just plop them in the ground, moving around if you prune the rose back beyond climbing range - and if you buy them at the end of the season even the double hook ones are under $20 at the hardware store:
And here is all that fencing as well as the shepherd's hook totally disappearing during growing season (and clematis chaos):
Shepherd's hooks are also good for lazy upright supports for climbers where a trellis won't work. Aloha is a mostly upright climber that doesn't need that much support, but it needs something to keep the canes from tipping and to provide a support for some horizontal bending of canes. Here's a bare cane shot of Aloha with its hook:
Ah, I'll have to finish the photos in a reply since I'm out of room here...
Cynthia
Comments (21)
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jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6
8 years agonippstress - zone 5 Nebraska thanked jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6
Lynn-in-TX-Z8b- Austin Area/Hill Country
8 years agonippstress - zone 5 Nebraska thanked Lynn-in-TX-Z8b- Austin Area/Hill Country
Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
8 years agonippstress - zone 5 Nebraska thanked Melissa Northern Italy zone 8
Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR
8 years agonippstress - zone 5 Nebraska thanked Sheila z8a Rogue Valley ORnippstress - zone 5 Nebraska
8 years agoGlad you liked the ideas and find them useful! We're not always that green or sadly that luscious in blooms (I took the liberty of picking nice photos of the roses), but I find ways of enjoying the garden however it looks at the time. I do love the more positive euphemisms for cheap and lazy - affordable (fragrancenutter), ingenuity (Patty) and effective (Kes). You are very kind with your comments - gorgeous (Sheila), a feast for the eyes (Ingrid), and the look I'm actually deliberately going for, a jungly rosey garden (Melissa). My word for it is rose chaos, and it's a way of making lazy sound sort of deliberate.
I agree that bamboo canes are useful in many ways around the garden, and I just put them to use today as I was stringing chicken wire around the base of the neighbor's black metal fence to keep rabbits from going through the 4" slats. I wanted a lazy way to hold the chicken wire up close to the black fence, and I happened to have saved the 2' lengths of bamboo canes that Heirloom puts in their roses to protect the canes. If you thread a bamboo cane through chicken wire and stick it in the ground, it holds it pretty darned upright and sturdy without looking too artificial.
I also used more of the green fencing around the base of the big aluminum cage with bird netting around my blueberry bushes. I've been fighting a bunny-bird conspiracy, where the bunnies gnaw through the bird netting and eat the berries they can reach, then let the birds in to get the rest. Now the netting is zip-tied to the green fencing 3' off the ground and hopefully that'll break up the cabal.
I'd promised a photo of bending down a one-cane wonder with the green fencing. Here are two roses that have a 4' lone cane sticking up that was in the way anyway, but should put out some nice laterals once bent to the side. This one is High Voltage, with one large cane stretched off to the left and tucked into the fence.
And here's Die Welt with one even larger solo cane tucked off at a distance from the fence, that is already starting to think about putting out laterals:
Oh and Dame des Chenonceau is indeed 6' or better even in zone 5. She usually has surviving cane and she really does want to be big. Don't make the same mistake I did - give her room! She's definitely worth it and is probably in my top 20 roses, maybe top 10 on a good day.
Do keep sharing your ideas as well!
Cynthia
Roxana *** ZN 5 Indianapolis IN ***
8 years agonippstress - zone 5 Nebraska thanked Roxana *** ZN 5 Indianapolis IN ***nippstress - zone 5 Nebraska
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modestgoddess z6 OH
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nippstress - zone 5 NebraskaOriginal Author