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ROSE CARE FOR MARCH
by Vivien Bronshvag, Consulting Rosarian
by Vivien Bronshvag, Consulting Rosarian
Winter’s second punch struck hard in mid-February, washing off blossoms from plum trees and who knows how many other fruit trees. Bees had just come out before the rains resumed and temperatures dropped to freezing. Hail pelted us often as snow arrived on Mt. Tam. Thus ended our “early January spring.” So don’t worry if you haven’t yet finished pruning your roses! You now have more time. You can even revisit your “cuts” and make sure they still make sense to you.
You do want to continue to clean up whatever debris the winds and rain deposited in your rose garden. You have time to “pinch” the pink buds of new growth (some call this finger pruning) that may be coming out on the inside of the stalks, so that the growth comes mainly from the outside and rear of the stems, allowing the new growth to fan out. By limiting the number of these pink buds, you are assuring that the energy of the rose’s growth will be focused into fewer buds. They therefore will produce larger and stronger stems that will be capable of producing larger flowers.
Normally, in March we recommend giving your roses a ring of 2 cups of alfalfa meal pellets around the root ball along with a ½ cup of Epsom salts in the same ring. This will be good for the roses as they prepare to leaf out and develop buds. We don’t recommend fertilizing new roses until after the plants finish their first bloom.
You may recall that last summer I wrote about my roses having developed downy mildew after all the heavy late spring rains. This was a repeat performance from the year before. The first year I had professional experts apply Metalaxil to the soil about three times throughout the growing season. I really believed I had solved the problem until it reappeared last May.
Last year, after much defoliation of diseased new growth, I applied organic soil amendments which were a mixture of E.B. Stone Organics Rose Grow Planting Mix and Greenall Soil Booster for Flowers from Sunnyside Nursery in San Anselmo. In a wheelbarrow I mixed one bag of each product—blending together composted fir bark, redwood compost, mushroom compost, composted chicken manure, sphagnum peat moss, earthworm casting, volcanic pumice, alfalfa meal, bat guano, kelp meal, gypsum, oyster shell lime, dolomite lime and feather meal. Doesn’t that sound yummy?!!! Be sure to wear gloves and maybe a breathing mask. During the growing season, we reapplied this mixture, as some roses seemed to need it more than others. The problem seemed to clear up—downy mildew does go away with heat. We also changed the soil in pots to this mixture as well.
I am neither a scientist nor a botanist. I am a rose grower and a lover of roses. Before I planted this rose garden, I trucked in tons of rose growing soil, slightly acidic. I cannot say why fresh soil in full sun produces disease. I know it happens no matter how careful one tries to be. So I expect this year that the disease will reappear because we have had so much rain that every nutrient must have washed all the way down to China….again.
I do not want to wait around for the plant’s energy to make new growth, which I will then have to painfully defoliate because it will be diseased again. That just can’t be healthy for the plant. And I can think of better things to do rather than defoliate for days on end.
I’ve given this a great deal of thought. I want to prevent new growth from having disease if I can. So I am ordering – for this March - a truck full of the E. B. Stone Organics Rose Grow Planting Mix and the Greenall Soil Booster as well as alfalfa meal and Epsom salts. I plan to apply the Stone-Greenall mixture first to all the roses as a soil amendment and then cover them with alfalfa meal and Epsom salts. I believe there will be rain throughout March, perhaps sporadically towards the end of the month. I hope that this new mixture gets to the roots before they leaf out. I will finish with a top dressing of two-inch fir bark.. I intend to reapply this organic mixture as necessary. I expect we will have rain into May. My roses and I will just try to keep living happily together blooming forever after.
A YEAR OF ROSE CARE:
January
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Last Modified: 3/18/11