Roses
Our roses have arrived! Buying roses and planting them out in winter allows them to acclimatise well to your garden, settling in when they are bare and dormant, ready to explode into leaf and flower in spring. We get a range of standard on 90cm stems and bush types.
Roses live a long time, so to get the best from them it is important to improve the soil before planting them out. Make sure the drainage is good, and raise the bed or create a mound to plant in if necessary. Roses like a neutral pH, so test your soil (or bring us a sample and we will test it for you) to see if you need to add lime to it. Well-rotted manure or compost mixed through your soil a few weeks prior to planting will help build up its nutritional levels and water holding capacity.
As they settle into their new position you will not need to feed them anything other than a gentle root tonic like Seasol every month, and give them a thick layer of nitrogen rich mulch. Once they have established, roses do need extra care to get the most out of them, but will reward you with months of fragrant blooms that are great for cutting. Spring and Autumn are their best flowering months, but many roses bloom for 9 months of the year, only resting in winter.
These care tips should help you take care of them.
- Feeding and Mulching
Roses are gross feeders, which means simply that they love heaps of nutrients. Use “Up-Down-All Around” to help you meet their needs.
- Nitrogen helps shoots (above ground)
- Phosphorus helps roots (below ground)
- Potassium is used by the whole plant and especially promotes flowers and fruit (like a vitamin).
A good organic mulch of Whoflungdung, lucern straw or cow manure will gently feed your roses with nitrogen, and keep moisture in the soil too. Add a few handfuls of Sudden Impact for Roses which is a pellet form, organic based boosted fertiliser. It includes a full range of secondary nutrients and micronutrients in a natural form along with boosted levels of Iron and Magnesium and is used in many of the key rose gardens around Australia.
A slow release fertiliser like Osmocote Plus Trace Elements will help provide phosphorous and other trace elements to ensure your rose bush is resilient to disease, and it includes a wetting agent to help water and nutrients soak in to the soil.
Liquid potash is great at promoting flowers and fruit. At this time of the year your bushes will be using up lots so a fortnightly application will help your roses significantly.
Earthlife is a great product to use too as it gives your roses lots of silca, which in turn helps it grow sturdy strong foliage that is resistant more able to resist black spot.
- Pests and Diseases
Some pests love to make a meal out of your roses. In particular aphids, mites (red spider), and scales that are hard to deal with pests. Black spot too can become a problem. Yates Rose Shield will treat all these and is available as a ready to use product if you only have a few plants or a concentrate if you’re thrifty or have lots of roses in your garden.
- Watering
Roses respond best to a deep watering of about 10l of water two or three times a week whilst they are established. Once they are part of the garden you can reduce this to a good soak deep soak once or twice a week depending on the weather. Avoid splashing water on their foliage.
- Varieties
Bush Roses: Standards:
Fearless Blushing Pink Iceberg
Freesia Brilliant Pink Iceberg
Gold Bunny Ebb Tide
Good Samaritan Iceberg
Heaven Scent
Iceberg
Mister Lincoln
Neptune
Queen Elizabeth
Crown Princess Margareta
Parfum De Paris
