Rose Notes

Download the most recent copy of
the Rose Newsletter below
wriiten by CGCI Rose Chairman Jolene Adams.

Fertilizing Your Roses

By Jolene Adams, CGCI Rose Chairman

Here in Northern California we do NOT want to add more magnesium to our soil - so the Epsom Salts are definitely not recommended.
The Blood Meal and Bone Meal are good organics, but they are usually added to the hole when planting a rose, not scattered over the rose bed or scratched into the soil. Dogs and cats and other critters will smell this a mile away, and then they come and dig it up!
Ironite is okay if your roses are showing that they need iron. Osmocote is a time-release fertilizer. Small balls of plastic are filled with a fertilizer, and then you put them into the ground about 4" deep around your roses. If the temperature of the soil gets above 75 degrees and you are watering enough to melt the plastic ball, the fertilizer oozes out and feeds the rose.
If you put any of this on top of the soil, you are wasting your money and your time. Anything you add to the rose bed needs to go underground. You will need to either scratch it in, water it in, or bury it.
Mushroom compost and chicken manure (hopefully composted too) are good organic additives. Again, you need to mix it into the top couple of inches of the soil and water well. Leaving it on top just lets it dry our and blow away.

A Few Thoughts on Growing Roses

By Harry Dedini, Valley Lode District Director

Roses like to be by themselves in full sun. They will tolerate other light conditions but they get leggy, less flowers and mildew. Fertilizer and some type of aphid control will keep them healthy. Cutting off the flowers or old flower heads to a five leaflet leaf will conserve the plants energy, make it grow more and take the summer heat better. Why the five leaflet leaf? Because the bud above this leaf has been used to make the flower stem and new shoots will sprout from the lower leaves.

You might want to consider drip irrigation for your roses. Roses do not like sprinkler irrigation. I had one line on each side of the rose row with one gallon per minute drippers at four feet apart for a number of years. Last year I added drippers to make them two feet apart in each row. I covered the ground with a weed-blocker screen; then bark; then the drip system. I still run it 30 minutes, three times a week in the middle of the summer. The growth has doubled and the flowers are higher in number and quality. Be sure to use a flow control (10 to 15 pounds pressure or you may blow the drippers out) and a filter (to clean the sand and shells out of the water supply) and a valve to hook it up to work off of your control clock (you may need a digital clock to get enough time per station).

I always took roses to my teachers in the spring. Why don’t children do that anymore? I needed every edge that I could get and we didn’t grow apples. It worked on my mom too. She didn’t like us using them on mud pies but who could turn down such a beautiful presentation from such a loving son. Roses are a good way to remember moms; they have beautiful color, wonderful smells and thorns to poke you to pay attention to the job at hand.