Mikes RoseCare Page
A note on these pages - This page is one full page of text. The items below are links to bookmarks in the big story. If you print this out you have printed all of the sections, you don't have to go to each section and print them one by one..
Before I start, thanks to everybody who has emailed me to say how helpful these pages have been. It's been amazing that people all over the world have found this corner of my world.
Why I've made these pages
Most of what I learned about caring for roses I learned on the Internet. I'm hoping by sharing my experiences I can help somebody grow fantastic plants. There are many resources giving much more detailed information then I have here, a search on rose care, roses, rose garden or something similar will provide you with enough information to keep you busy for weeks. I keep these pages simple because there is more of a need for things like this geared to beginners. Anybody can grow roses, even if you only have the plant for one year and it dies. Some of the other sites have people dedicating their life to the plants, it doesn't have to be that way.
My wife Anna and I live in Connecticut, about a mile or two from Long Island Sound. Our summers are hot, and our winters are cold. The snowfall is totally unpredictable, one winter we had two or three storms that brought memorable snow, the year before we had close to twenty. Living so close to the water changes the type of snow we get, instead of the light and fluffy snow they get inland, we get heavy wet snow or ice storms. Both put a lot more stress on the plants over the winter, and I lose a couple of plants every winter.
My rose garden is a small square of land in the back yard, measuring about 25 feet long and 16 feet wide. It grows a little bit each year as more and more plants are added. It receives a good deal of sun. The soil suffers from poor drainage in spring as the snow melts and the ground thaws, but the rest of the season it is fine. I currently have 48 rose bushes in the space, and am waiting for UPS to deliver another seven this year. Obviously I ignore the "required spacing" between plants on the label. If my growing space was unlimited, then I'd space the plants out more, I simply do not have the space. After all, a man needs his tomatoes too.
The plants come from a variety of sources. Three of them were purchased from a hardware store, the $5.99 bush in the plastic bag. Having only one out of the three being productive only a few years later is not a good track record for the "discount roses".
Many of them are mail ordered from Jackson and Perkins. I didn't like the idea of mail ordering because you don't get to see the plant before you buy it. But so many others on the Internet had good experiences with mail ordering roses that I gave it a shot. I was shocked at the quality of the plants I received, they were all in excellent condition and started growing in no time. In my area, the plants are shipped to arrive the last week of March. Some had sprouted before they were shipped, so if you mail order make sure you get them out of the boxes and into water as soon as you receive the plants. Getting the catalogs in November makes the winter a bit more bearable.
There are other mail order companies out here, and in 1999 I also have ordered from Edmunds and Martin and Kraus in Canada.
Some are purchased from places like Home Depot or nurseries. These were either plants that we got in the beginning of Spring to get a rush start (a very risky thing to do as there is still a chance of frost), or varieties that looked too good to pass up. You usually pay more for the container roses purchased this way, but they are a bit further along then the bare root roses that come in the mail. You get a chance to see what the plant looks like and pick one that has a good amount of growth on strong canes. Double check the metal tag on the plant against the label on the box or container, we found some where the plant was different, and some where a no name rose was put in the container of a well-known rose, selling for many times what it should have cost. Like in every other business, there are people out there trying to cheat you.
From the end of June through July we also purchased roses from nurseries having a "clearance sale" on them. They were the roses that were not purchased earlier. The longer you waited the less of a selection you have, but the less they cost. Since they have been in their boxes or pots for the growing season they are usually root bound, and have flowers that have come and gone. Most of the plants we bought in this category we purchased knowing we would have limited success this season, and hoped to get better results next season. We were surprised at the success we had with these in their first year.
Plants from the "clearance sale" always were covered with aphids. They come on sale during the peak of the aphid season, and the nurseries selling them, for whatever reasons, could not be bothered to treat the plants. Like any live growing plant you being into the garden, pay special attention to any "critters" you may be introducing to the garden.
Lastly, some were purchased mail order from their clearance sales. The plants are very small (some looked like twigs) but are very discounted (about $6 each). Given a year or two and they should be performing just like their full grown competition.
The roses were planted at the depth suggested on the box for winter climates. They were planted a lot closer to each other then they should have been, but space limitations made it necessary to crowd them. The bottom of the hole got a shovel of compost, but nothing else special was done. When planting bare root plants I put a mound of Peat Moss over the plant to keep it from drying out in the wind.
The plants get a thick layer of mulch once the new growth at the bottom is a few inches long. There are a wide variety of mulches out on the market, I love the cocoa mulch when I can get it. If you are not familiar with cocoa mulch, it is made from the shells of the cocoa bean plant. Lately the brand name on the bags was Hershey's. It smells wonderful, and it's deep brown color makes a nice base for the roses. It has a couple of downsides, it is very slippery when it gets wet, and it can keep the water from reaching the plants as it sometimes forms a blanket. If it's mounded to form a bowl at the base of the plants you won't have any trouble.
Once the last frost has gone by (or what I hope is the last frost) in the spring the plants from the previous year are pruned. When the forsythia turns yellow is a good indication of the time. Pruning is a fairly simple task, as soon as you realize that cutting away at your plant will actually promote growth and make it more beautiful. Make sure you are using very sharp cutters, you want to cut through the branches, not mash them.
First to go are any dead or broken branches. The snow and ice take their toll on the plants and are responsible for most of the broken canes. Anything with insect damage, skin damage, or any unidentified growth on the plant gets cut. Make sure you disinfect the cutters with a 10% bleach solution before going to a healthy part of the plant. If the plants are tall and I'm pruning them to a foot or two I'll just hack everything off to the three foot level to make handling it all easier.
Next you start shaping the plant. Any growth that cuts across the center of the plant gets cut, but I rarely have any of that. Any of those weak twiggy branches coming out of the bottom below the main bud of the plant to the root gets cut. Any leaves from last year left on the plant come off too.
Be warned though, the thorns on the stems would have hardened over the winter and are very sharp.
Now for the hard part. The main canes of the plant have to be cut back. Cutting them back will promote new growth to form on the strong lower portion of the canes instead of from the top. I usually leave as many canes as I can, but not more then five to seven. Some of the plants don't have that many, some have lots more. In any case, I cut back to 12 to 18 inches for the HT's and Grands. Keep checking to see that you end up with live material at the cut. If not, then cut it back some more. (One of the most amazing sights I ever saw was the rose garden at Windsor Castle in England in February. Hundreds of rosebushes all in a row were all cut back to within two feet of the soil) If you get all the way to the ground with no live material then you probably lost the bush over the winter. It happens, every year a few don't survive the cold. I still give it a chance to grow just in case, but if all the other plants are sprouting and this one isn't, then it's time to replace it.
Cut from the outside to the inside at an outward facing bud. Cut 1/4 to 1/2 inches above the bud, with the high side of the 45 degree angle cut on the outside of the plant, the low side towards the center. The new growth should then start on the outside of the plant. Be patient, the shoots will form from the buds below the cuts you made. Trim off any new growth starting towards the inside of the plant. There is a sealer sold just for cut plants to keep the insects out, some people don't use it, some use it all the time, others on just the larger canes.
I don't add any of these cuttings to the compost pile as they have all been treated with chemicals for insects from the year before.
When you prune each plant check to see if the metal tag that tells you which plant it is needs to be loosened so it won't dig into the plant as it grows. If necessary, move it to a smaller branch.
Watering in the spring for new plants helps the plant grow deep roots to let it make it through the summer. I don't believe there is a rose site on the Internet that doesn't stress this. I prefer the drip method, taking a five gallon plastic pail I picked up on the side of the road or from a dumpster where they are doing construction. Clean out the pail, and rinse it good. I put the pail between several plants, and with a small nail poke a hole in the pail about 2 inches from the bottom facing each plant against the pail. If the hole is too low then the mulch may block the spray of water from reaching the plant. I fill the bucket with water and the slow stream of water then goes directly to each plant instead of running off. I fill the bucket four or five times a week when it doesn't rain, each bucket usually waters three plants. It doesn't get any easier then this unless you have something like soaker hoses, which I am adding s I get them at tag sales.
The pail method also prevents losing water to evaporation and runoff. You don't have to stand there sprinkling and waiting for the water to go into the ground, just fill the pail and go to the next one.
I water two or three times a week during the summer depending on the amount of rain we have. I try to water in the morning before going to work, this will allow the plants to dry off before evening so the leaves don't have as much chance of getting some of the diseases caused by letting them sit wet all night. If the plants were better spaced out they would dry better, but again, I made a tradeoff.
Two or three times during the summer I Miracle-Gro the garden, if there is any food left in the sprayer when I am done I will do the roses, but it's not my prime feeding method. Lately I've been using the once a season food from Jackson and Perkins.
Besides the neighbors coming and stealing my roses (and tulips, lilies, etc), the only pests I have had to face so far are the aphids and the Japanese beetles.
The aphids show up in June (but have been there as early as mid April), and come by the thousands. Little green specks of bugs, they are on the cover of any chemical used for roses. I have two approaches to the aphids - The first is dusting the plant from time to time with any of the hundreds of chemicals meant to kill them. I don't really like to dust, the roses are next to my herb box, and there are some small children that use the back yard to play in. The dust is a short-term solution, it is gone when it rains, and as a new bud shoots up it isn't protected until the next time you dust. (Dust may be hard to find as many chemical manfg are not making rose dust anymore).
I also have had some luck with the Ortho Rose Pride. It is a combination plant food systemic insecticide. As a test one summer I used it on some plants and not others, and there was a difference in the amount of aphids on them. If the aphids are there first thing in the spring before the Rose Pride starts working, then you have to resort to chemicals. Orthene (I use the liquid concentrate) has been very effective at both the aphids and the fungus.
Giving a natural predator a shot seemed like a good idea, so when I saw a local Garden Center was selling 1,000 ladybugs in a pint container I bought some. I released the bugs in the center of the garden at night like I was supposed to, and they all marched out in all directions. Ladybugs are fascinating, they will march to an object, then start climbing it. They will climb to the top, and if they come across any aphids along the way they turn into eating machines. By morning they were climbing up every plant, feasting on the aphids. By the end of the second day there were no aphids, by the end of the third day the ladybugs all flew away to go get some more dinner. They did a fantastic job, but they will only stay around as long as there is food and when they ate it all they moved on to other gardens in the area. A short term solution, and fun to watch, but I could not afford to buy a container of bugs each week.
Rubbing the bud gently between the fingers and squishing all the aphids, as gross as it sounds, also worked.
Japanese beetles are rose eating machines. They came out at the beginning of July, and every now and then I still see some in September. Luckily, they had a definite preference for some of my roses (usually the light ones) over others so they were not in each bush, but the ones they went after were some of the most beautiful.
The beetles love basil, so it probably isn't a good idea to plant the roses next to the basil, they eat one as dinner and the other as dessert.
A beetle will start at a spot there the stem meets the new bud. It will begin munching away, and either tunnel into the bud leaving a hole or will start eating across the bud, literally chopping the pedals off the bud. As a bonus, they leave lots of disgusting little black creatures behind, if you have beetles make sure you shake out the roses before bringing them inside. The little black creatures (don't know what they are called) last till the first frost.
The only thing I found that worked against them was brute force. In the morning and evenings and several times during the day if I was home, I would have to go through each rose and see if there were any beetles digging their way into the bottom of the flower. If there were, then they were taken out with tweezers and dumped into a container of soapy water to drown. This was one of the things I learned searching the Internet, while there are a lot of chemicals out there for the beetles, they have different degrees of success, but drowning always works.
In case you are wondering, they preferred any of the lighter colored plants, the white and white-yellow buds, the light pinks and the yellow, never touching the reds.
Borrowing a term from the tomato plants I call the side buds that form on a long stemmed rose sucker buds. Don't know if anybody else has coined the phrase yet, if they did sorry. On a lot of the rose stems you will have the one bud that forms at the end. Shortly after that one two or more will appear just below it on the stem. The ones appearing below the main one are what I am calling the sucker buds. If they are left they too will grow into roses, but all the buds will be smaller, the stem will be shorter, and you will wonder why your plant isn't doing as good as you expected.
Pinch off the suckers as you see them. There are three in this picture, two just below the main bud and one forming on the leaf below the first two. I pinch them off much before this stage, there were let to grow for the picture. I check two times a day, and sometimes the same stem will have a new one by the afternoon. Pinching them off will let the main bud grow taller, and the flower will be larger then if you didn't pick it. Be careful, the main bud is very fragile at this time and easily snapped off.
I've learned the hard way to start the pinching at the uppermost ones, this way if you do break off the delicate bud by mistake then you can trim the stem to a lower sucker and let it grow. If you started pinching from the bottom then it will take longer to get it growing again. Don't give up, no matter how careful you are you will lose a bud from time to time.
If you wait too long to pinch it off the stem will show little stalks where they were when you pinched them off. It makes a huge difference in the length of your stems for the long stems and the size of your blooms, this is probably the single most important thing I do to get large flowers.
Some people leave the side buds but pinch off the center main bud. This gives them a "spray" of roses on one stem.
People are amazed that I start picking flowers in the beginning of June, and keep picking flowers well into the fall. One year I picked a bush into November, I never let it go dormant and it didn't survive the winter. The flowers were too beautiful not to pick, but I paid for it by not having the plant again.
If you pick a rose, then another one or two or more stems will form on the cane. These will form into roses, and you repeat the process. If you look at the picture below you can see the cane labeled new growth coming out just below the cut. If you look below that you will see another new cane, and you can see two on the cane in the background (the new growth is the red green color, the original is the green color). Each new cane forms a new flower, and when cut two more stems. If you let the flowers sit and don't pick them rose hips form on the plant. The formation of rose hips tells the plant it is time to get ready for winter and to stop producing flowers. I picked between six and twelve roses each and every day between the end of June and the end of August from my seventeen plants in 1997.
There are a ton of sites that tell you where to cut the stem, I cut about 1/4 inches above a set of five or seven leaves, leaving at least two sets of leaves on the cane. Cut above an outward facing leaf set, and cut at a 45-degree angle. This will encourage the new growth on the outside of the bush, making the bush a lot fuller and not have canes and stems crossing all over the place. Before cutting look to see if any shoots have formed above where you are going to cut, if there are then you have to decide if you want to let those grow or new ones to form where you made your cut. In any case, you want to be sure the cane is thick enough at the cut to support the new growth. The general rule of thumb is if it is as thick as a pencil it is strong enough to hold the new growth.
When to cut is a matter of personal preference. I think a rose looks its best as the outer petals of the bud just start opening, and the center is still a tight bud. My wife loves them fully open. Sometimes a bud will continue to open after it is picked, sometimes it won't. I usually pick them at different stages, some as buds and some open. They all get cut again and put into water immediately. If there is any chance of heavy rain I will pick all the flowers that are starting to open. A rose will hold a tremendous amount of water between the petals, it can become very heavy and fold over.
If you have used chemicals on the plants don't add any of the leaves you cut off the stems to the compost pile, it may kill the critters at work there.
What to do with all those flowers
Besides enjoying them fresh, there are other things you can do with the roses you get. My wife usually takes care of this department, here are some of the things that happen to our roses.
Potpourri - As the pedals are ready to fall off we usually put them in a bowl. They will slowly dry and release their fragrance into the room. Make sure you turn the pedals on a regular basis so that the pedals in the center don't form mold. Soon the bowl will be overflowing with the dried pedals, and will smell great for months. For a dramatic look pull the pedals off the stem as a group, and place them on top of the bowl as if they were still attached to the stem.
Dried Flowers - Why pay for dried roses when you can make them yourself? Anna hangs the flowers by their stems upside down for about a week to let them dry. You can do this as buds or as they start to open. You want to dry them upside down so the stems are straight in line with the buds. We hang them pretty much wherever we have space, next year we will be getting a decent dehydrator to make it easier to dry some vegetables from the garden, so it will make it much easier to do the roses.
The flowers can also be dried in Silica Gel, but since we like to dry them with the stems on we would need way too much silica gel. A coworker once insisted the non-clumping kitty litter also works wonders for drying flowers, I have not tried that method yet. The dried flowers can be used in arrangements, the dried buds can be used to make a beautiful topiary.
Waxed Flowers - Anna saw this on one of the craft shows. Melt some clear paraffin (we use the blocks of wax from the home canning aisles) over a double boiler. You want the wax to be just above melting temperature. Holding the rose by the stem, dip it into the wax one at a time, let the excess drip back, and turn it over before those little drips of wax form. While the wax is still warm you can shape the flower if you want. Let the wax harden, and you will have another beautiful rose. It can also be dipped into Ice water to get it to harden right away. This method takes some practice and patience, so don't give up.
Winters here are completely unpredictable, so we plan for the worse and hope for the best. The canes from the plant are loosely gathered into one group and tied with a couple pieces of string. If the canes are too far apart, or not shaped to make a single bundle then they are not tied. If the bundle is tall then it is staked standing up so the winter wind does not snap them off. There are directions elsewhere on the Internet for burying the bush in severe cold areas, I've tried it a couple of times without success, but know of others who have been very successful.
Some of the compost I have been making all summer is mixed into whatever remains of the cocoa mulch, peat moss, whatever you have. Be careful not to damage the plants while doing this. As the leaves fall from the trees, a blanket of six to twelve inches of leaves is raked over the entire rose bed. This helps to keep the snow off the base of the plants. The leaves are very gently removed when the plants start showing growth in the spring and I gamble that there will not be another frost. Sometimes if the days are sunny but the nights still cold I'll brush the leaves away from the base in the morning, and put them back on at night. I do the same for the lilies and tulips that poke out early in the season, once you get into the habit it isn't that bad.
Also during the winter the canes are checked from time to time for signs of disease or pests. If necessary, the diseased parts are removed before it gets a chance to spread. As the winter goes on, you will start to see the canes dying back from the top down. Let it go on it's own, you will prune the dead parts off in the spring.