It's a little late. I have had these rose bushes for nine years. In April and May they always look mediocre. After that it is down hill fast. I would like to leave this house next month with beautiful roses. I have always had good intentions of learning how to develop breathtaking rose bushes, but I have procrastinated and now our relationship is almost over! I could compare that example to real life relationships or some other insightful thoughts but....... the purpose of this post is to say.....
Is there anyone out there that can help me with my roses? What do I do after they bloom? I am ignorant. At least I might learn something that I can use to improve my green thumb for our next home!
Help.........
5 comments:
No can do - brown thumb here. But I did want to say that your roses are quite lovely! :)
I kill house plants--regularly--your thumb is bright green compared to mine--and I am with Gayle--the roses are beautiful!!! JB
They look good to me but then what do I know about roses? We have a shrub rose that we can't kill! We've trimmed it back, and even transplanted it to the backyard and still it thrives. If yours is a shrub rose, it might benefit from some pruning. Good luck!
Thank you! Hopefully they will look good in a few weeks as well! I'm glad to know that I'm not the only non-green thumb individual around.
Peg, I might be able to help you. I have, as one of my hats, the Very Esteemed title of Florida Master Gardener. Can you believe they gave me that title? It sounds SOOO presumptuous that I never tell a soul that I am one! Well, occasionally it slips out, but only when I'm certain someone needs a bit of humility.
You mentioned in another post that you live in Central Texas, which means you and I have the exact same climate --- hot and humid! Roses hate humidity, so they are beautiful in the spring and ghastly in the summer around here.
When you move to your new location, buy antique roses, not the varieties that you find at the home centers (unless you can find antique there). The antiques can handle our humidity and our funguses and bugs. Or get a little climbing variety called "Red Cascade." It does wonderfully here in the Deep South.
For now, prune your roses after each flush of blooms, spray them for Black Spot (use horticultural oil for this, or make your own with 1 Tablespoon cooking oil to 1 gallon of water), spray them for bugs (use an insecticidal soap, or make your own by putting 1 T of liquid dishwashing soap into that same gallon of water -- no more than a tablespoon, I mean it! I learned that the hard way). Those two tricks should keep the bugs and diseases away. The pruning will keep new growth and new blooms coming.
And then you can feed them...with a rose fertilizer or any other fertilizer, or chicken or rabbit or cow poop, if you have any of that lying around. Also -- one of my favorite tips is that roses LOVE potassium and need it, so give them your banana peels. I just throw the peels on top of the soil.
There ya go! If you ignore all this wise advice, don't feel guilty. Your roses will still come back in the spring. They are very hardy.
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