A beginner's guide to successfully & joyfully grow roses
For years, I let the fear and bad reputations of roses prevent me from growing them. I started growing 3 roses...all purchased from a local nursery in Southeast Houston back in 2014. At that time, I knew NOTHING about roses and didn't want to learn either. Totally lacked of committment and just wanted instant gratification! I just wanted beautiful roses in my garden. They started developing blackspots badly because once again I had absolutely zero understanding/desire/interest to learn more. So I yanked 2 out and just kept one (it's still alive and kicking 8 years later despite my ignorance - I finally learned how to care and love it in 2020).
When Covid hit, a strong desire to grow roses hit me again.. I no longer worried about blackspots and etc. I just thought I would deal with them differently this time, not from a place of frustrations or perfection. I bought Mary Rose, Gentle Hermoine, and Jump for Joy from Heirloom Roses during a pandemic and the rest is history. I went from 1 rose to 50+ to date!!
If I could turn back time to 2014, I wish I knew how to set my expectations and understand roses/diseases/pests before beginning my rose journey. These are something I don't see people advising new rose growers. Most people focus on what varieties are most disease/pest tolerant, how to amend soil, how to dig holes, how to understand NPK and so on. However, there are more important factors to consider even before those steps.
I put together this guide hoping that it will be helpful to people who are new to roses like me 8 years ago >> https://www.rosesinhouston.com/post/a-beginner-s-guide-to-successfully-joyfully-growing-beautiful-roses
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Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR
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Comments (40)Enjoyed the links posted here. Here's my own 2 cents on this. I do all the seeding for a CSA (about 70 boxes per week), sow about 300 lettuce seeds a week for 7 months straight. The first and second year made many mistakes and got poor germination. Putting lettuce trays on heat mats did reduce greatly the germination rate. Putting the trays in a unheated hoop house also didn't work, it got too hot during the day. Now we just leave them outside. In spring gets down to 45F at night, maybe 55F during day. We use automatic overhead sprinklers, so the trays get over watered every day. Our seedling table must provide water for all the seedlings so must water enough for the largest plants. To prevent damping off, use a 1:1 perlite:peat mix (Black Gold seedling mix) with some sifted compost included 4:1 mix:compost. The overall mix is light and airy. A coir based mix didn't work, stayed too wet. Use only solid fertilizers, liquid ones get washed away with the overwatering. For the mix, I add in crabshell meal (Eliot Coleman recommendation), greensand, and soft phosphate. When I added in bloodmeal or fish meal to the mix I got damping off. To much available nitrogen. When the seedlings are about an inch tall, I sprinkle a mixture of bloodmeal and sifted compost over them. This gives them the needed nitrogen and once an inch high, I've never had any damping off. To save time I never tap the seeds into the mix. After filling the tray with mix, just drop/bang the tray against the table 4 times to get the mix to settle to a good firmness. Put the seeds on top and add a layer of fine vermiculite and overhead water. The fine vermiculite layer noticeably increased our germination rate on all seeds. Keeps the top moist and more importantly protects an emerged seedling from fungus. The vermiculite is sterile....See MoreRose beginner needs advice on container roses
Comments (19)I have 18 roses in containers. My climber is in a 15 gallon plastic container and the rest are hybrid tea roses in 5 and 6 gallon containers (5 gallon plastic and what I am calling 6 gallon are terra cotta pots that are bigger than 5 gallons but not by much - they could be 7 gallons). My roses started bare root (with 2 exceptions - 1 pulled from the ground and 1 purchased already potted) 6 years ago. Obviously it's better to have a bigger pot, but I haven't had major problems with this size pot. I have changed the soil once so far just to keep it fresh. I fertilize every other week at 1/2 strength with liquid fertilizer similar to Miracle Gro and once per month I fertilize with fish emulsion and an organic slow-acting fertilizer like alfalfa meal, blood meal, or Grow More. I never apply all of this on the same day, so that usually means a schedule similar to: Wednesday Week 1 Organic granular fertilizer Saturday Week 1 Weak liquid fertilizer Saturday Week 2 Weak liquid fertilizer Wednesday Week 2 Spray fungicide Saturday Week 3 Weak liquid fertilizer Wednesday Week 3 Fish emulsion Saturday Week 4 Weak liquid fertilizer Wednesday Week 4 Spray fungicide (I try to do the nasty things like spray chemicals and smelly fish emulsion during the week so that my neighbors and I don't have to deal with it when we are BBQing and the like on the weekends.) I spray for insects when they become a problem, except that I do proactively spray all of my buds with spinosad because thrips are the bane of my existence. For instance, I don't think I sprayed an insecticide at all last year. Most years I end up spraying maybe twice. I don't want to kill the praying mantis and hover flies that I get. Fungicide is a different story and I spray every other week (the week I do not fertilize). I use Immunox alternated with Mancozeb/Banner Maxx. When I do use an insecticide I use one mixed with yet a different fungicide just to switch it up. That's about it. Here in CA I usually prune in January, although I pruned in February this year. We usually get 3 flushes per year, although I had 4 this year with the mild weather. The biggest challenge I face growing roses in containers is keeping them watered. A rose in the ground can withstand even the fiercest heat for a few days between waterings. My container roses need to be watered every day when the temperature is above 90 degrees and when it's 100+ sometimes I water them twice if they look sad when I get home from work. If I miss a day the roses don't die, but the new growth gets crispy and the flowers I work so hard for burn up. Luckily, this is usually just for a couple of weeks in July or August. Otherwise, I water 2-3x per week. Right now with the rain I am watering just 1x to supplement Mother Nature....See MoreA Beginner's Foray Into the Rosey World!
Comments (8)Thanks Serena!! We sure don't get that hot here!! Thank goodness!! Wow - I love those roses - especially the last one. Good grief that's beautiful!!!!!! I adore that orange!!! My Chicago Peace is way pinker than that - probably because of our cooler summers. Mike - You've picked some beauties to start your foray into the rose world. I'm sure you'll end up with waaaaaaay more than 2 as the years go by!!! WELCOME!!! Carol...See MoreIs this cane dead? A visual guide for cold zone spring pruning
Comments (52)HI folks Sorry I've been off posting since last fall - I've missed you all. Partly I've been online so incredibly long hours teaching (university) that I haven't been able to stand being online any more than I have to be. Also, I had a devastating garden-wide bout with Rose Rosette Disease last fall and had to take out about 20 roses and prune ABSOLUTELY everything else to the ground to hope to avoid catastrophic rose disaster. I'll post separately about that, maybe this weekend. Suffice to say for 1000 roses several of which were 12' tall and 10 years old (owning their own dumpsters) this was an exhausting and demoralizing fall. To respond to folks in warmer zones that just got that bizarre freeze all the way to Texas, it doesn't hurt to wait a bit to prune. Dead canes don't cause the rose problems any more than long fingernails cause you problems beyond inconvenience, though if there is downy mildew spotting it's probably good to prune sooner than later. I try to wait till the rose starts leafing out and you can see what is alive at that point. Seil, no I'm not remotely pruning at this point - the post is several years old and was from mid to late March. We're still recovering from the snowiest January ever and one of the coldest Februaries ever. Thank heavens it was in that order! Under the snow it's always 32 degrees however cold the air gets, and we had easily two feet of snow (16" in one snowfall) protecting everything. It's just now starting to melt with temps this week into the 40's all week, but it'll be a long time till I'm out in the garden. Great tips about not pruning once-bloomers Seil. Fortunately those are among the roses that don't take any pruning at all and I almost never see winter damage. Occasionally I'll see a once bloomer shed a cane for some reason, but that can be pruned out after the spring bloom to avoid disrupting the other canes. For the first year ever since growing roses, i have absolutely no rose pruning to do this spring. Everything was pruned to the ground so it's a matter of seeing what resprouts from the ground, and anxiously checking for any signs of RRD and ruthlessly digging out. No second chances or wimping out. Glad this post is helpful! Cynthia...See More
rosecanadian
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seasiderooftop
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last yearTG is in a difficult spot in the garden: my only wall is a north-facing wall, so she gets zero hours of direct sun between about October and March. In spite of that, she's perfectly healthy and has grown into a huge plant with canes reaching 3 meters high. She'd probably bloom more in more sun.
I also have to comment on her toughness. This spring she withstood three storms with sandy, gale-force winds and barely lost a couple of leaves when many other plants in the garden were left totally defoliated.
I love her sunny blooms and fruity scent.
I didn't realize she'd get this big when I got her! I foolishly believed the dimensions stated on the tag... It might be crazy to try to grow such a beast in a container, but I'll do my best to keep her happy if I can!
I kept the tag as a reminder (DA has since revised the stated dimensions on their website). 1.25 meters, hah, she outgrew that in her first six months!
rosecanadian
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noseometer...(7A, SZ10, Albuquerque)