Carol: So happy to hear you lost 9 lb. You did a great job of taking care of your health !! That made my day (I'm happiest when my life has meaning, that is, I help someone). I looked up your above roses: Glowing inspiration has light scent, Alaiza is very pretty with strong scent and ruffles looking like PcDM. Both Alaiza and Tanglebank are better choices than Moonlight Romantica (boring yellow & bush too tall) and PcDM (becomes single petal if not enough minerals, over 8 feet tall). Tanglebank Legacy grows to 5 feet with orange zillion petals, see below pic. from the web: WOW !!
Brendan: Azomite is alkaline (pH 8) with mostly calcium. When I tested Azomite, it did not UP blooming, but it made giant monsters out of roses, like Marie Pavie went from 2' x 2' to 3'x3', and Crown Princess Mag threw a 10 feet cane. Under alkaline condition and plenty of calcium, roses get VERY TALL .. such as Radio times became 5' x 3' when watered with pH 9 tap-water plus lime in horse manure. Its normal size is 2' x 2.5'.
Best way to force blooming: sulfate of potash and gypsum, plus trace elements (chicken manure or Masterblend). Chicken manure is high in boron, copper, zinc, necessary for blooming. Drawback: it's high in salt, thus best in spring only. Masterblend is high in potassium at 38, and it's more soluble potassium for alkaline condition. Chicken manure potassium is 3, not enough.
Best way to force branching (more round-bush), and more blooms: more phosphorus, chicken manure is high in phosphorus but doesn't have the high iron and high manganese of MasterBlend. Masterblend is high in phosphorus at 18. Coop-poop NPK is 4-2-3, but the phosphorus is much higher than what's listed.
Carol and Brendan: Austins that are compact & bloom well in pots are:
Darcy Bussell: Mine bloomed well in a pot as 1st-year-own root, light scent.
Golden Celebration: Best scent ever (smells like cupcakes from the oven), always have blooms in the pot as tiny rooting. The one in pot blooms better than the one in clay. It takes drastic pruning well, blooms best if pruned short after each flush.
Sharifa Asma: So tiny and the scent is stronger than Abraham Darby.
Young Lycidas: Scent is better than Madam Isaac Pereire, bush is tiny, even as grafted-on-Dr.Huey.
The Dark Lady: scent is very good with acidic rain, will be short & compact if grafted on multiflora (cluster-root). Even rose park's Dark-Lady (grafted) is less than 1 foot.
Mustead Wood: thorny but takes drastic pruning well. Even rose park's Munstead wood (grafted) is less than 1 foot. My own-root is bigger than rose-park.
Prospero and Lady Emma Hamilton are both short & small for the pot. Lady Emma is very small as grafted even for Khalid's zone 9b.
The secret to force Austins to bloom is sulfate of potash and gypsum, both are acidic, but Austin likes acidic rain. Sulfate of potash has 18% acidic sulfur plus high potassium at 50 to force blooming, and gypsum has 21% sulfur plus calcium for more petals. Sulfur is also from acidic rain.
Sulfate of potash is best on Amazon as Route 88 Agricultural granular sulfate of potash, or Alpha chemicals (a white powder).
I don't recommend Langbeinite for alkaline CA since it's less acidic and HARDER TO DISSOLVE in alkaline tap water. For CA and for pots, Masterblend NPK 4-18-38 is high in SOLUBLE potassium chloride (dissolves 3 times better than sulfate of potash), plus plenty of trace elements for blooming. One can pile up chicken manure or horse manure on top of pots for trace elements, but that's too salty.
Osmocote PLUS NPK 15-7-12 has enough trace elements for tiny rootings to bloom, but ALONE can't support a huge bush, plus the release is too slow. Thus MasterBlend NPK 4-18-38 is best used to provide high potassium and trace elements to force blooming for pots, in warm CA.
Below is Sharifa Asma as 10th-year own-root, very small with intense scent, it's 1/10 the size of Abraham Darby, the scent is unique & amazing and worth growing for its scent alone:
Below is Young Lycidas (grafted-on-Dr.Huey), the scent is fantastic old rose, bush is very small & compact. My mistake: I didn't put enough gypsum in the planting hole for root growth so it died through winter. All the calcium went to make zillion petals, and not enough calcium for root growth:
Below bouquet on left is Munstead Wood, right are clusters of Young Lycidas, and middle light pinks are James Galway.
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how to root rose
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