Everywhere you look around town and driving out towards Wimer, you see roses in glorious bloom. I wonder if any of those plants got any pruning earlier this spring. There is one in particular in town that is simply gorgeous; it looks like a Hawaiian sunset. Every spring for the last three springs, I’ve watched that rose bloom, while the canes get thinner and sparser. The blooms are still fabulous, but that plant is going to need some help in the next couple of seasons before it starts to break from lack of stoutness.
If you pruned your roses earlier this year, you may have erred on the side of caution and not pruned enough. Or your roses may have had other ideas and are now working toward doing their own thing. “Their Own Thing” is not always the best thing for the bush as a whole.
Pruning is primarily an early spring activity, although a certain amount of it is frequently required during the course of the growing season. June here in the Valley often brings a flush of growth in our roses.
Now is the time to check on the pruning you did earlier this spring. You’ll want to check for die-back. Check the canes you cut earlier and see if there has been further die-back. If there is, you’ll want to top off that cane by cutting down to an outside bud or leaf growth. If you are seeing a lot of growth in the center of the bush, you’ll want to remedy that by correcting the pruning at the center. Watch for suckers, too, as they will sap the energy from the plant and its blooms.
Local rose experts advise cleaning up the bud union by trimming off the old canes and stubs. A nice, clean bud union will reward you with many more basal canes and eventually more rose bush and better blooms.
Don’t forget deadheading at this time of the year, with the flush of the season’s first blooms. You’ll want your plant to stay strong and deadheading encourages further and more blooms for the rest of the summer. If you’re growing hybrid tea roses, you’ll want to deadhead by removing the spent flower at a point on the cane where five or seven leaflets are growing. The cut should be made ¼ inch above the leaf axial of an outward growing bud and should slope downward into the center of the bush.
Floribundas and Grandifloras are deadheaded much the same way, although removing the center bloom from a Floribunda plant will produce much more uniform bloom sprays. Some experts recommend removing the spent blooms from Floribundas and Grandifloras as they complete their bloom cycle without disturbing the rest of the blooms on the spray. Once a bloom cycle is complete, these two types of roses are pruned exactly as the Hybrid Tea. Olde Roses can also profit from deadheading, because reoccurring blooms are encouraged in those types that are intermittent or repeat bloomers.
Be mindful of unproductive growth that will crowd the middle of the plant and restrict sunlight and the flow of air. Remove this growth and any blind shoots which are twiggy in appearance and do not end in a bloom bud. A good resource is the book,”Growing Good Roses” by Rayford Reddell. He recommends pruning basal breaks at a bud eye when the cane is twelve to fifteen inches tall so to encourage a sturdy branched cane that will produce more and better blooms.
For the suckers that will inevitably emerge through this season, you should dig down beneath the soil and prune that sucker off at the point where it grows.
Let’s talk about the really fun part of growing roses – cuttings. Growing new rose plants from cuttings is one of the most enjoyable facets of growing roses. Cuttings can be taken at any time, but following the first bloom of the season is the best time because of the amount of good weather remaining for the cutting to get established and gain strength.
There are many ways to prepare cuttings and once you find one that works for you, stick with it. The easiest and most convenient way, in my opinion, is cutting the fading bloom of the variety I want to grow at a point on the stem which will provide four (or more) bud eyes and placing that cutting immediately in water.
The cutting is prepared by removing the bloom and the leaves from the lower two sets of leaflets. The end of the cutting, to be placed in the growing material, is stripped on several places of bark and the stripped areas and the end are generously coated with Rootone (a rooting hormone). The prepared cutting is then placed in a pot filled with a growing medium of equal parts soil, sand and peat moss. Make a hole in the medium, place your cutting, being careful not to knock off the Rootone and tamp the medium firmly around the stem.
Record what kind of rose you’ve gotten your cutting from (if you can) and the date on the pot. Enclose your cutting in plastic that is supported by a couple of lengths of stout wire (coat hangers are great for this) bent into a U. Make sure you make a hole in the top for ventilation. The bag acts like a mini-greenhouse. Place your cuttings in a shady place and wait for them to mature. Watch for new leaves to appear, remove the plastic bag and feed with a water soluble fertilizer. Some folks like Ra-Pid-Grow. Fox Organics makes several good water solubles. Any of the Fox products, liquid kelp or fish emulsion are good choices. Don’t put your cuttings out into the full sun immediately. Do this gradually and watch it grow. Once your cutting is ready to move to the full sun, it is ready to be planted at its permanent location.
Ordinarily, June is also the month that gardeners start to wonder about how much water they should be giving their roses. If the spring has been especially dry, this will understandably generate some concern. This year, though, we seem to be having a somewhat wonky weather pattern. Roses in the height of their growth cycle are very thirsty and require about an inch of water a week. Less water stresses the plants and will result in poor growth and less bloom. Putting a rain gauge in your rose garden is a good idea since it’s pretty easy to overestimate the amount of rainfall we are actually getting.
There are two schools of thought on the method of watering. Some say that wet rose foliage is to be avoided and deliberately spraying roses is inviting disease into your rose garden. Others will say that roses enjoy and benefit from the occasional cleansing shower. After all, we don’t live in the Sahara and rains often wash our roses. A strong stream of water from a water wand is a good way to rid the roses of aphids and spider mites. It’s generally a good idea after a rain or a bath to respray for blackspot as it requires moisture to infect our plants. Use the baking soda and water formula or the fungicide of your choice.
Other Thoughts…
Remember, just because you don’t have a plot of land on which to grow fresh veggies, doesn’t mean you can’t. Many veggies lend themselves well to container gardening. Selecting a dwarf or bush variety and give you a plant well adapted to growing in a pot. Veggies that take up little space, such as carrots, radishes and lettuces work well in a lower, shallower container. Carrots come in shorter and rounder varieties these days and do nicely in the barrel sections one sees this time of the year at the garden centers. Crops that bear fruits over a longer period, such as tomatoes and peppers, are perfect for container gardens.
If you pruned your roses earlier this year, you may have erred on the side of caution and not pruned enough. Or your roses may have had other ideas and are now working toward doing their own thing. “Their Own Thing” is not always the best thing for the bush as a whole.
Pruning is primarily an early spring activity, although a certain amount of it is frequently required during the course of the growing season. June here in the Valley often brings a flush of growth in our roses.
Now is the time to check on the pruning you did earlier this spring. You’ll want to check for die-back. Check the canes you cut earlier and see if there has been further die-back. If there is, you’ll want to top off that cane by cutting down to an outside bud or leaf growth. If you are seeing a lot of growth in the center of the bush, you’ll want to remedy that by correcting the pruning at the center. Watch for suckers, too, as they will sap the energy from the plant and its blooms.
Local rose experts advise cleaning up the bud union by trimming off the old canes and stubs. A nice, clean bud union will reward you with many more basal canes and eventually more rose bush and better blooms.
Don’t forget deadheading at this time of the year, with the flush of the season’s first blooms. You’ll want your plant to stay strong and deadheading encourages further and more blooms for the rest of the summer. If you’re growing hybrid tea roses, you’ll want to deadhead by removing the spent flower at a point on the cane where five or seven leaflets are growing. The cut should be made ¼ inch above the leaf axial of an outward growing bud and should slope downward into the center of the bush.
Floribundas and Grandifloras are deadheaded much the same way, although removing the center bloom from a Floribunda plant will produce much more uniform bloom sprays. Some experts recommend removing the spent blooms from Floribundas and Grandifloras as they complete their bloom cycle without disturbing the rest of the blooms on the spray. Once a bloom cycle is complete, these two types of roses are pruned exactly as the Hybrid Tea. Olde Roses can also profit from deadheading, because reoccurring blooms are encouraged in those types that are intermittent or repeat bloomers.
Be mindful of unproductive growth that will crowd the middle of the plant and restrict sunlight and the flow of air. Remove this growth and any blind shoots which are twiggy in appearance and do not end in a bloom bud. A good resource is the book,”Growing Good Roses” by Rayford Reddell. He recommends pruning basal breaks at a bud eye when the cane is twelve to fifteen inches tall so to encourage a sturdy branched cane that will produce more and better blooms.
For the suckers that will inevitably emerge through this season, you should dig down beneath the soil and prune that sucker off at the point where it grows.
Let’s talk about the really fun part of growing roses – cuttings. Growing new rose plants from cuttings is one of the most enjoyable facets of growing roses. Cuttings can be taken at any time, but following the first bloom of the season is the best time because of the amount of good weather remaining for the cutting to get established and gain strength.
There are many ways to prepare cuttings and once you find one that works for you, stick with it. The easiest and most convenient way, in my opinion, is cutting the fading bloom of the variety I want to grow at a point on the stem which will provide four (or more) bud eyes and placing that cutting immediately in water.
The cutting is prepared by removing the bloom and the leaves from the lower two sets of leaflets. The end of the cutting, to be placed in the growing material, is stripped on several places of bark and the stripped areas and the end are generously coated with Rootone (a rooting hormone). The prepared cutting is then placed in a pot filled with a growing medium of equal parts soil, sand and peat moss. Make a hole in the medium, place your cutting, being careful not to knock off the Rootone and tamp the medium firmly around the stem.
Record what kind of rose you’ve gotten your cutting from (if you can) and the date on the pot. Enclose your cutting in plastic that is supported by a couple of lengths of stout wire (coat hangers are great for this) bent into a U. Make sure you make a hole in the top for ventilation. The bag acts like a mini-greenhouse. Place your cuttings in a shady place and wait for them to mature. Watch for new leaves to appear, remove the plastic bag and feed with a water soluble fertilizer. Some folks like Ra-Pid-Grow. Fox Organics makes several good water solubles. Any of the Fox products, liquid kelp or fish emulsion are good choices. Don’t put your cuttings out into the full sun immediately. Do this gradually and watch it grow. Once your cutting is ready to move to the full sun, it is ready to be planted at its permanent location.
Ordinarily, June is also the month that gardeners start to wonder about how much water they should be giving their roses. If the spring has been especially dry, this will understandably generate some concern. This year, though, we seem to be having a somewhat wonky weather pattern. Roses in the height of their growth cycle are very thirsty and require about an inch of water a week. Less water stresses the plants and will result in poor growth and less bloom. Putting a rain gauge in your rose garden is a good idea since it’s pretty easy to overestimate the amount of rainfall we are actually getting.
There are two schools of thought on the method of watering. Some say that wet rose foliage is to be avoided and deliberately spraying roses is inviting disease into your rose garden. Others will say that roses enjoy and benefit from the occasional cleansing shower. After all, we don’t live in the Sahara and rains often wash our roses. A strong stream of water from a water wand is a good way to rid the roses of aphids and spider mites. It’s generally a good idea after a rain or a bath to respray for blackspot as it requires moisture to infect our plants. Use the baking soda and water formula or the fungicide of your choice.
Other Thoughts…
Remember, just because you don’t have a plot of land on which to grow fresh veggies, doesn’t mean you can’t. Many veggies lend themselves well to container gardening. Selecting a dwarf or bush variety and give you a plant well adapted to growing in a pot. Veggies that take up little space, such as carrots, radishes and lettuces work well in a lower, shallower container. Carrots come in shorter and rounder varieties these days and do nicely in the barrel sections one sees this time of the year at the garden centers. Crops that bear fruits over a longer period, such as tomatoes and peppers, are perfect for container gardens.
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