February Rose Growing
...one of a series, for a complete year!

February Rose Growing is another month in the Rose Growing Calendar Year. Having such a yearly calendar of what I should be doing in my rose garden for each month of the year has always been a huge help. It keeps me on task and on time. Check out all these pages and build yourself a yearly plan for your garden. Rose Gardeners deserve the best!

February can be a month of temptation for many gardeners, especially those further south and on the west coast. Sunny days lure one outside but unless the forsythia is blooming (usually after Presidents Day), it's too early to prune!

Things To Do For February Rose Growing:

-Finish defoliating as many of your roses as you can. If you have used copper spray this will help defoliate; if you haven't sprayed yet, this will be your last chance before new foliage appears.

-Don't remove protective hilling from roses too soon. Safer to wait until March.

-Sharpen your pruners in anticipation of pruning and size up your roses as to how much pruning you'll have to do.

-Continue general tidying up in the garden. Weed!

-Continue planting new roses or move old roses to new sites if the ground can be worked.

February is when the gardener should check the garden to see what needs to be done later. If it is exceptionally warm, some pruning can be done but one must remember that March can be nasty and colder weather could play havoc with newly pruned roses.

However, a lot of preparatory work can be done - if only checking to see what roses survived the winter, reviewing your pruning options or sharpening your tools.

It's still a good time to catch up on your reading...check out the many good rose books at the library or your favorite bookstore...re-plan your rose beds or maybe consider joining your local rose society!

Rose Lore - The Shapes of Roses:

Usually a description of a rose includes its shape because not all roses are the same.

Some basic bud and flower shapes have been defined to help simplify these descriptions.

1...A bud "either shows no color or, if it is beginning to show color, is less than one-quarter open."

2...It becomes a bloom upon opening more than half-way.

3...A blown bloom is a bloom with many petals which has opened wide, exposing its stamens.

4...Some rose buds may be: slender or tapered, pointed, ovoid (or egg-shaped), urn-shaped or rounded (also called globular).

5...Flowers may be: pointed and high-centered, globular and globular centered, cupped, flat or thin, camellia-like or imbricated, informal or cactus.

6...Some Old Garden and Austin roses will have a rosette shape - many overlapping petals of different sizes or a quartered rosette when the petals are packed into quarters.

7...Small, rounded very double flowers with many tiny petals are described as pompon.

8...All wild roses and some modern ones have only 5-7 petals. Such a rose is called single.

9...Roses that have 8-20 petals are called semi-double.

10..If more than 20 petals are present, the flowers are called double. [ However, some roses have 55 to 60 petals, so most catalogs distinguish doubles as moderately full, full and very full.]...so now you know!

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