- Author: Rosie D
Welcome to March! This is the time when your roses are starting to break out from dormancy. It is a good time for garden maintenance before the big flower display in April.
If you didn't do this last month, take some time and check your irrigation system to make sure it is working correctly. Make repairs if it is not. My garden is strictly on drip. Yes, I did go through every emitter to make sure it was an adequate size and working, and cleaned out the valves to make sure they were free from sediment. It is worth the time.
If your watering system isn't drip, run your sprinklers in the morning (only on days that we can water) before the day warms up. This will avoid moisture evaporating or collecting on leaves which can (during the warmer months) result in sunburn or (during the cooler months) make it favorable for fungal diseases to develop on your roses. If you have sprinklers, avoid watering in the evening or at night. This will prevent excessive ground moisture at night. Soil that is too wet can lead to unhappy roots and/or fungal diseases. Avoid watering when it is windy, so the water doesn't evaporate into the air instead of watering your roses.
If you are thinking you might want to use fungicide to prevent fungal diseases from happening, I would encourage you to wait and see if they develop. Only spray if you see fungal diseases or pests that can't be managed by any other means.
If you believe you must spray, no matter what, here are some dos and don'ts. Don't spray on a windy day. Don't spray during the late morning, afternoon or evening hours. Don't spray when bees are out (even organic sprays). Don't spray when it is over 80 degrees F as it can burn your plants. Don't spray on a rainy day or if it is going to rain the next day. Don't spray if your pets (or your neighbor's pets) are in the yard. Don't spray if your children/grandchildren/neighbors are in the yard. I cannot stress enough that spraying is serious. You must take precautions.
If you choose to spray, you can use a lime sulfur spray or a horticultural oil mixed with a dormant spray for fungal diseases. You need to wear an appropriate face mask (N95), gloves, closed-toe shoes (no sandals or slippers), and disposable coveralls or a safety suit. Yes, anytime you spray your roses for insects or diseases, it is serious business. You can hurt yourself or others if you don't. That includes organic sprays as well, such as neem oil, BT, etc. Just because something is labeled organic, doesn't mean it can't hurt you, your neighbors, pets, birds, bees, etc. Shower, including washing your hair, after spraying. Those chemicals (yes, even organic ones) need to be stored appropriately. Don't mix chemicals because you think that it will be better for the plants. Follow directions on the label. Leftover sprays and their containers need to be disposed of, appropriately. If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it is. There are alternatives!
I remove leaves that have powdery mildew, rust, etc., if I get it. New ones will grow in. Mostly, I don't get fungal diseases. That is because I try to choose disease-resistant varieties for my yard (and we generally have low humidity). I also practice shovel pruning. If the rose is a disease-ridden mess, out it goes. I grow roses for my own enjoyment and their beauty. I don't have time to baby them. Some roses do better than others in our climate. I want the ones that do well in my yard.
I clean up debris from my roses and place it in the green bin. It does not go in my compost pile. I also keep a good 3 to 4 inches of organic mulch around my roses to stop weeds in their tracks and keep my roses roots cool in summer and warm in winter. It also helps to keep my soil moist so I can water less. The mulch will eventually break down and help improve the soil in my yard. The soil in my yard left something to be desired when I first moved here. After several years, it has greatly improved due to using compost and mulch (not rubber mulch!) that eventually breaks down and improve the soil.
I attract the “good bugs” such as lady bird beetles, lacewings, etc., by planting pollinator plants in my garden. Flowering native plants such as yarrow (Achillea), California buckwheats (Eriogonum), seaside daisy (Erigeron), sticky monkey-flowers (Mimulus), tidy tips (Layia platyglossa), etc., attract the “good bugs” that will eat the “bad bugs.” Native plants are great choices. They are beautiful and they are drought tolerant. These plants also attract birds to my yard. They too will eat the “bad bugs” and they are quite amusing to watch.
If you have the space for new roses, there is still time to purchase them and get them into the ground or a large pot. I like ordering roses online from several different sources. I find a greater variety online and end up with terrific plants. Also, the people who work at these nurseries tend to know the plants they sell and can make useful recommendations about what will or won't work in my garden.
When the new growth on your roses is about 2 to 3 inches long, you can start fertilizing. I recommend a good organic rose fertilizer. It will contain micro elements that will help to improve your soil and your plant. Synthetic fertilizers do not. In reality, as I have written before, your plant doesn't care what you buy, organic or inorganic. However, organic fertilizers won't burn your plants or add salts to your soil (synthetic fertilizers are made of various salts — not the kind of salt you eat). Organic fertilizer will help to build your soil over time. As your soil improves, you will be able to use less fertilizer but have the same result.
When you apply fertilizer, make sure the soil is moist. Water before and after your application. You can also spray your roses with seaweed (kelp) fertilizer. Roses love it. It may smell for a day or two but I have smelled much worse when it comes to fertilizers.
Again, test your soil before you fertilize. Don't fertilize just to fertilize. You are wasting your hard-earned money (which you could be spending on plants!). More is not better! I have had great results with just compost and a good layer of organic mulch (not rubber mulch).
Next month…we should be seeing some beautiful spring blooms! If you can, take some time to enjoy all of the new and beautiful spring growth in your yard.
Until next time . . . "Friends are the roses of life. . . pick them carefully and avoid the thorns!" - Unknown
- Author: Rosie D
It is finally time to start pruning your roses! In last month's column, I talked about pruning safety: wearing gloves, sleeves that cover your arms to protect them from thorns, wearing eye protection, etc. I also wrote about preparing your bypass pruners by sharpening them and keeping them clean. For some roses, I use either a pruning knife or loppers to remove canes. I use the loppers or a pruning knife if the canes are too thick for my pruners. Also, if you want to move a rose from one spot in the garden to another, now is the best time — when they are pruned and dormant.
You are going to prune your canes to an outward facing bud. What is an outward facing bud? Buds are formed in the “axial” where the leaf meets the cane. If you look closely, you will see a little bump underneath the leaf. About one-quarter inch above that is where you are going to cut. Prune to an outside facing bud (not one facing the inside of the bush). That bud will produce a flowering cane.
Cut out old and scarred canes. Cut out spindly canes. Cut out one or both canes that are crossing each other. Those canes can rub against each other, and diseases can then infect both canes. The center of the plant should not be crowded with canes, but open and airy. Again, dispose of the leaves and debris in the green bin.
When pruning, make sure the cane's pith is white and not dark. The pith is the center part of the cane. It should look like the inside of an apple. If it is dark, keep cutting the cane back until the pith is white. You may have to cut the cane all the way back to the soil or graft. That is OK. Those dark centers indicate that the cane is in decline or diseased. Removing it should spur new growth for your rose.
Climbers and rambling roses are pruned differently. What is a climbing rose and what is a rambling rose? A rambling rose blooms once in the spring. A climbing rose will continue to bloom throughout the spring and summer into the fall. Start to prune climbing and rambling roses only after you have had them for a couple of years. This allows them time to form nice arching canes. These are called the main canes. Keep about 4 to 6 of those nice arching main canes and prune any old, crossing, diseased canes from the bush. Those arching canes will have lateral canes that come out from them. Cut those lateral canes to about 3 to 5 axials (where the leaves come out). Those lateral canes are the ones that will be producing flowers in the spring.
Climber and rambling rose canes should be tied to a structure such as an arbor as close to a 45-degree angle as you can get, without breaking the cane. That angle will stimulate lateral growth and blooms. Tie them loosely. You don't want the tie to girdle the cane.
Now is the time to clean up around your rose bush. Make sure you have removed all of the leaves off of the stems and dispose of them properly. Removing the leaves helps prevent over-wintering spores of a fungal disease to re-infect the rose.
Rambling roses are climbing roses that bloom only once in the spring/early summer (but oh, what a display!). Prune them lightly after they have finished blooming. If you prune them later, you will be pruning off next year's flowers.
When your roses start to put out new growth and that growth is about 2 inches long, it is time to fertilize. I use a good organic rose fertilizer, or alfalfa meal (not alfalfa pellets), and compost. Sometimes our alkaline soil doesn't allow the rose bush to utilize the iron in the soil. This causes the rose leaves to look whitish instead of green. That means that your rose needs extra iron. There are lots of good iron plant supplements (not the kind you take!) in the marketplace. You may need to feed that iron supplement to the rose, if the leaves overall are a light, whitish green. Check your soil with a good soil test to see if this is necessary. Don't add fertilizer and supplements just to add them. More is NOT better for the rose, and it can be bad for the environment as well. Just use what your rose needs.
I also mulch around my roses. Put a good 3-inch layer of mulch around the drip line of the rose and not next to the canes. That will help to save water and keep your roses cooler in the summer. You will also have to weed less! A bonus! That mulch will eventually break down and enrich your soil. Another bonus!
Assess the irrigation system to make sure it is in good working order. If you follow the steps above, in about 8 to 10 weeks you will be rewarded with beautiful blooms.
Rose of the Month — Flamingo Dancer
Earlier in the article, I showed you a climbing rose that had been pruned. Here is what it looks like in the spring. This rose, called Flamingo Dancer, is one gorgeous rose that tolerates our soil and weather conditions beautifully. It also makes a lot of hips in the fall (great for tea if you don't use insecticides). Because it's a semi-double flower rose, the bees find it irresistible. It's great for our pollinators! Flamingo Dancer was bred by Burling Leong, who has her own nursery in Visalia, Calif. Burling has bred several amazing roses. Her nursery is a beautiful place to visit. She worked for many, many years for the famous rose breeder Ralph Moore (whose nursery was also in Visalia).
Until next time . . . Life is not always going to be roses and rainbows. You are going to have uncomfortable moments. It's what we do with those moments that is going to count and determine our destiny. - Lana
- Prepared by: Terry Lewis
Tasks
- New roses of many varieties are featured in magazines and articles - or view them online. Look for those you like, select ones that are suitable for your area, and buy them bare root. Consider the aesthetic qualities of roses as well as size when placing them in the landscape.
- Soak bare root plants for two to four hours in a bucket of water to rehydrate roots before planting.
Pruning
- Prune existing roses to remove diseased and damaged wood, regulate size and shape, and improve bloom quality.
- Use clean, sharp tools to avoid splitting or crushing canes and branches, cut one-quarter inch above a bud or leaf joint and make cuts at a 45° angle to the branch.
- Leave three to five canes in a vase-shaped configuration when pruning hybrid teas, grandifloras or floribundas.
- Remove leaves from roses to force dormancy, if this task has not already been done.
Fertilizing
- Roses have a long growing and blooming season here, so a regular feeding schedule is important. Usual fertilizing months for established plants are February and September.
- At planting time, apply a rose fertilizer to new plants.
Planting
- This is the time to move and transplant roses. Prepare a hole two feet wide and deep enough to keep the graft above ground level.
- Make a mound of soil in the middle of the hole. Spread the roots as much as possible and place the rose on the mound. Add soil until the hole is about two-thirds full then fill it with water and let it soak in. Finish filling the hole and water again. Use the regular soil and tamp down to remove any air pockets.
- Fertilize with a rose planting product and follow label instructions. Remember to water regularly if there has not been any rain.
- Dress beds with organic material and mulch to control weeds.
- Keep mulch back from the base of the rose plant.
- Water if rainfall is less than normal.
Enjoy now
- Survey the completion of the first task of the new year, pruning roses, and look forward to the first spring rose in April.
Things to ponder
- Roses grow to different heights depending on the variety - from the lower landscape/shrub roses and floribundas to the taller hybrid tea and grandifloras. Keep this in mind when placing roses in your garden.
- Author: Elinor Teague
Many varieties of citrus and other fruit trees have set a bumper crop of small fruit this season. Alternate bearing or the setting of fewer fruit every other year or two is normal for fruiting trees, but this year's bounty of mini fruit is unusual. The cause could be last season's long, cool, wet spring weather that delayed blossom set and pollination. Or it could be that the immature heavy crop of fruit should have been thinned early. The fruit is juicy and sweet. Just remember that the best way to store citrus fruit is to leave it on the tree until it falls off.
Rose leaves are still bright green and firmly attached to most bushes. Roses will set flowers all winter long if temperatures don't drop to freezing levels. In the Central Valley with its mild, short winters, rose lovers usually strip browning leaves from their bushes in mid-November to force dormancy by using water from a hose to blast off the dead and dying leaves. But you might need to hand strip green leaves from roses this winter. Do it after you've pruned to minimize the work.
Weed seeds germinate quickly when the soil temperature warms above 50 degrees. That often happens during winter warm spells like those we had during December. As you are using a wiggle hoe to cut down tiny weeds, you'll notice that it's much easier to till of the soil in areas that have been kept covered with a three- to four-inch layer of mulch. Those of us who have begun spreading the fall leaves into planting beds instead of raking them up are seeing that the leaf mulch does reduce weed germination, but because we haven't had much rain yet this winter, the dry fall leaves have barely begun to decompose. Rake or blow the leaves to turn them and encourage faster decomposition.
- Author: Debbie DiNoto
Happy New Year! I hope you and yours are ready for a wonderful 2024. So, what do we do in the rose garden this month? Actually, not too much in the actual garden itself. It is time to get ready for our annual pruning, either very late January or the beginning to the middle of February.
I wait until the beginning to the middle of February to conduct my annual pruning. Those of you up in the mountains and foothills may need to wait a little longer. Why? Because we still can get frost or freeze in January. If I pruned prior to then and we had a late cold snap, all the new growth would be damaged, and I would have to start all over again. Better to wait. Pruning tells your rose that its winter "nap" or dormant time is over, and it is time to start pushing out new growth. You can expect the first flush of blooms about 10 weeks after pruning.
What do I do instead of pruning?
It is time to make sure all of the leaves from your roses that have fallen in your yard are picked up and put in the green trash bin, not your home compost bin. Yup. The green trash bin. Rose leaves can carry diseases and home composting will not get hot enough to destroy those diseases.
The second thing on my agenda is to make sure my tools are clean and sharp. Please don't waste your time on cheap garden equipment. Invest in a good pair of bypass pruners. Bypass pruners are the ones that have a sharp curved cutting blade (which slices through the cane) and a dull curved non-cutting blade (which holds the cane in place while you are cutting it). Don't use pruners that have a sharp flat blade that rests against a flat dull blade. They are not good for pruning roses.
Also have a good pair of loppers. Loppers come in different size blades. Those different sizes will have a maximum diameter that they can cut efficiently. If you use a lopper that is too small for your cane, you will damage the cane and possibly the lopper. If you have large canes, you may need to use a hand saw (such as a keyhole saw) with a narrow blade. Pruning saws will also work.
I love my tools and it is important to take good care of them. Keep them clean. I use rubbing alcohol to clean the blades on my pruners and loppers to help prevent disease transmission from rose to rose. I wipe them down after pruning or cutting each individual rose bush. There are alcohol wipes that work great for this purpose, and I just carry them with me from plant to plant. Do not use any cleaners with bleach in them. They will eventually ruin your blades.
Another important piece of equipment is my gloves. I don't like getting stabbed by my rose bushes. I use goat skin gloves or leather gloves. Make sure you find ones that fit your hands and that are made entirely of goat skin or leather. I thought I would try a new glove that is only half coated with something to prevent thorns from going through. First rose I touched, I got stabbed. I immediately went back to my leather gloves.
Don't wear gloves that are too big for your hands. Take the time to find a good pair that fits you! They will save you in the long run. I have known too many rosarians that have ended up having to seek medical care for cuts from roses or thorns getting stuck in their fingers. Roses carry some nasty diseases and if you do get cut, it is important to either get a tetanus shot or be up to date on your tetanus injections. I just prefer not to get cut from the get-go! Saves a whole lot of my precious time.
What else do I wear when pruning? I have specific rose gloves with long sleeves on them, but prefer my regular pruning gloves, so I wear welder sleeves when I prune. They fit my arms entirely and keep away the thorns while allowing me to move easily. Some of my roses are taller than I am, so being covered is important.
In addition to cleaning my gardening equipment, I also keep the blades sharp and lubricated. I will sometimes use 0000 steel wool to clean the blades and then lubricate them with oil. Any oil will do. Just use a drop or two to coat the surface. No need to drench. The oil will also keep your pruners from rusting. How do I sharpen my blades? There are different methods to do this. Some prefer diamond files. I use an all-in-one tool. It has a carbide bar and a ceramic bar to restore and hone all sorts of knives, shears, hoes, spades, etc. Super easy and quick to use.
One more task I will do this month is to make sure my irrigation system is in good working order and ready to go for spring/summer. I check my drip system to make sure that the emitters are working properly. I also make sure my timer is set to the proper day and times.
So that is it! Take some important time to take care of your tools, because they will take care of you and your roses. Clean up the rose garden so it is ready to plant and fertilize in February (or later if you live in the mountains/foothills). Time to be patient. Don't fertilize your roses this month. It is not time for that. That will come soon enough. Next month, I will go over how to prune your roses and climbing roses.
She will get big so it is important to have room for her to grow. She also has another name which is Souvenird'EliseVardon. This picture shows a young rose and rose bush. Her colors will deepen to a beautiful peach as she gets older.
Until next time . . . "One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today." - Dale Carnegie