Choosing and Planting Roses in Your Garden

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Friday, 4 July 2008

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By:Hege Crowton

If you enjoy roses, you can use them functionally as well as decoratively around your grounds — as creepers, shrubs, vines, climbers, and hedges or just as beds of pure colour.

Rose originators are enthusiastic and tireless, and every year new favourites appear. Most recently the headliners were the bright floribunda rose, Jiminy Cricket; the soft, pure-pink hybrid tea rose, Queen Elizabeth; the bright" yellow peace rose.

There are over 5,000 varieties of roses in the United States, and once you start growing your own you are apt to change your preferences from season to season.

In selecting roses, it is important to get healthy plants. Stems should be green and un-shrivelled, roots moist and partly fibrous. The most expensive rose is not always the best rose; it may be only a newcomer, much discussed and, therefore, a favourite.

In general, there are two types of roses: bush roses (similar to shrubs) and climbers (producing canes that require some sort of support). In the bush classification, the predominant type is the hybrid tea; it accounts for over 60% of all roses grown in America.

The other major bush types are the polyanthas (roses in large clusters), the fioribundas (large-flowered polyanthas), and the hybrid perpetuals (vigorous growers with a great crop in June and continuous blooming throughout the summer). The climbers include ramblers, whose long pliant canes have large clusters of small roses that can be used for covering walls, fences and banks.

The climbers also are pillar roses, adapted to growing near buildings and on posts and the climbing hybrid tree.

For planting roses a good garden loam with organic matter is important. It must contain peat moss, leaf mould, compost, rotted or commercial manure, and the bed should be prepared as far ahead of planting as is feasible in order to allow for settling of the soil.

Fall is the best time for setting out roses, but you can plant in spring. When your rose plants arrive from the nursery you should plant them at once. If they have dried en route, soak the roots and put the tops in a bucket of water before planting.

Trim back any roots that are weak, long or broken at this time. Dig a hole that is wide enough to allow the roots to spread without crowding. The rose is properly placed when the bud (the point where the top joins the roots) is just under the ground surface.

Space them about 18 inches apart in any direction. Prune the branches 6 to 10 inches from the soil.

To grow good roses it is necessary to cultivate, to prune and to spray. If you have a well-cultivated bed you need not worry about watering. But if you start to water in hot weather, you must keep it up, soaking the roots thoroughly about once a week.

Spraying every 10 days guards against the diseases and insects that attack roses. Nicotine sulphate wipes out the green lice; arsenate of lead is used against chewing insects; or sulphur and arsenate of lead may be used in a dust, as may DDT dust.

Winterise your roses by mounding sod around them after the first frost, or mulch with straw and evergreens. In cold parts of the country, remove the supports from the climbing roses and place the canes on the ground, peg them, and cover with soil mounds.

In spring, cut back your roses to within 6 inches of the ground. Ruthlessly lop off all but three or four canes on hybrid teas. This pruning will give you strong plants.

When your plants grow out from spring pruning, you will have to disbud, cutting off all the buds except the top ones on the cane. This is the way to grow large blossoms.

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