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ROSE CARE FOR JULY and AUGUST
by Vivien Bronshvag, Consulting Rosarian
by Vivien Bronshvag, Consulting Rosarian
Normally at this time in the growing season, our gardens would have experienced many days of over 85-degree temperatures and our roses would be ready for a pick-me-up concoction of alfalfa tea by now.
This year has been cooler, more temperate throughout the county. I think there may have been five days so far of warm to hot weather. Our rains continued weekly throughout May and into the beginning of June. I only recently turned on our irrigation system.
Last year my roses developed tiny dark magenta spots on the leaves which developed into massive blotches that made the leaves appear to be bleeding. It was horrible. I opened up my Consulting Rosarian textbook and discovered that downy mildew was the culprit and injecting Metalaxil into the soil around the roses was the solution. I called in a professional tree service that came over and injected the soil with the chemical. I also defoliated every infected leaf I could find and threw them into the trash.
Some improvement occurred but the problem required a total of three sets of soil injections throughout the summer to clear up the problem. This soil treatment also worked for rust which I also had.
Perhaps it was this year’s heavy rains that washed out all the Metalaxil from the soil. The magenta dots appeared again recently on some roses along with black spots on others and the tiny yellow spots (rust) on still others. I had told myself I would shovel prune if it came back but I have decided to try something else.
I am getting bags and bags of composted organic soil amendments such as E. B. Stone Organics Rose Grow Planting Mix which has composted fir bark, redwood compost, mushroom compost, composted chicken manure, sphagnum peat moss, earthworm castings, volcanic pumice, alfalfa meal, bat guano, kelp meal, gypsum, oysters shell lime and dolomite lime. I am blending each bag of this with one bag of Greenall Soil Booster For Flowers that has much but not all of what is in the Stone mixture and also has feather meal. I am working this mixture around all the affected roses that are in the ground and replacing completely the soil in pots with it even though this is not the usual time of year to do that. This has been such an unusual year.
I am taking to heart Gary Scales’ reporting from the 1949 Annual wherein ARS President Sweetser wrote, “The most serious mistake made in the growing of roses is the failure to put enough organic matter into the soil and to appreciate its vital importance to all plant life.” I am still defoliating every infected leaf I find that I can reach.
I continue to also try to pick up the debris that falls beneath the roses and prune to maintain the open bowl shape so that air and light can freely circulate throughout the rose. I am also removing any sucker growth at the base of the rose. Suckers appear below the graft and never carry the blossom that is above it. It frequently has different shaped and colored leaves than those above the graft. I dig down beneath the soil to the root and cut the sucker at its point of origin. If suckers are ignored and allowed to develop, the grafted rose above will die off because all the nutrition is being taken up by the growth below it.
I’ll keep feeding my roses after they bloom - from March through July I give the roses monthly feedings of ˝ cup of Epsom salts per rose washed in around the perimeter of the root base. Giving roses magnesium in this way is like giving people oxygen. It helps the roses get the chlorophyll where they need it.
Probably there will be some alfalfa tea down the line but I am hoping this organic matter in the soil improves things a lot. It’s good to read other people’s reports besides what is in our manuals.
A YEAR OF ROSE CARE:
January
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Last Modified: 7/30/10