Rose Growing Tips
Free Newsletter (sample) from Rose Works
Remember the candle holders on the patio table...
The ones with the beautiful floating miniature roses?
If your planning a repeat performance we better start right now!
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We bring you the updates, the latest tips, some bonus articles of interest as well as your monthly to-do suggestions.
http://www.rose-works.com, helping you to enjoy growing your roses.
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February 15th 2008
Issue #081
Published ten times a year.
[Every mid-month except December, when you have other things on your mind and January when we go looking for sun!]
Table Of Contents
1.News and Updates From the Website:
Highest rated pages for January?
What’s new?
What’s being planned?
Sound ads; Your input please!
2.Article of the Month:
“Five Secrets to Growing the “Best on the Block”!
3."To-Do" List: February
Cleaning, pruning, spraying, maybe!
…and get ready for spring.
4.Links and maybe some FREE stuff:
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Special Note:
**If you like this newsletter and find it useful,
please do a friend (and me) a big favor
and pass it on to them.
**If a friend did forward this to you,
and if you liked what you read, please subscribe
by visiting:
http://www.rose-works.com/
and completing the short form at the bottom.
Thank you.
**Yes, of course you can print this out and keep it,
but we have an archive where this can be retrieved.
Back issues will be available very soon!
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1.News and Updates From the Website:
http://www.rose-works.com has reached over 100 pages and is close to 100 visitors per day.
…and my choice for most interesting page of the month is:
Click to go to the GREEN ROSES page
The top eight pages, by most visitors are:
1.Home Page
2.Types of Roses
3.Pictures of Roses
4.Rose Cultivation
5.Rose Petals
6.Black Roses
7.Meaning of Roses
8.Rose Hips
The five latest pages added, in case you havn’t found them yet, are:
1.Rose Gardening Books
2.Rose Gardening Tools
3.Rose Gardening Gloves
4.Rose Gardening Organic
5.Rose Petal Candles
…And the next pages being prepared??
1.A Rose Gardening Calendar
2.How to Prune: Videos
3.An expanded rose picture album
*If you have suggestions for new topics please let us know
through the “Contact Us” page*
Click to go to the Contact Us page
Want to mention any important “Rose” events in your area ??????
Clubs, Shows, Tours whatever………
You can tell us and we will print them here!
Got any great photos of Roses or a Rose Garden ??????
We would use them~~and put your name to them.
[…about 300x400 pixel size is best, and we would have to assume ownership]
Please Note:We are trying out a new form of advertising. It consists of a five second sound ad as you open the Home page, and only on the Home Page! It will only play once for five seconds. If your sound is off, fine, you just won’t hear it. We are trying it out and have been promised it will be “Rose Garden Specific”……or at least about gardening. At present there are no ads but they could start anytime. We would like to hear from you about this. When they start, if you hear them…..your comments please!
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2.Article of the Month:
5 Secrets To Growing The "Best Roses" On The Block
It has been said that, in order to seduce Mark Anthony, Cleopatra welcomed him to her chamber with her chamber floor covered a foot deep in rose petals. She also soaked the sails of her ship with rose water to perfume the breeze that propelled her. She certainly had a feel for the dramatic and she understood the little secrets, the extras, which promote the ordinary to the spectacular.
If you cultivate roses, you understand the basics. The need for sunlight and a rich, well drained soil, together with careful tending and a healthy, organic rose bed management program. But what promotes the ordinary to the spectacular? How do we turn heads and make our roses the “best on the block”?
Here are five “secrets” to even greater roses.
1. Slow Release Fertilizer.
Nurserymen and growers have been using slow release fertilizer for years for several very good reasons. One application provides the correct nutrients to the rose bush throughout the season and it’s so time-saving. You can buy slow release fertilizer such as “Osmacote”, in most garden stores. It looks like tiny balls of clay coated with a water soluble outer skin. When mixed with soil and water the skin dissolves and the fertilizer starts to work…slowly. This then provides the required nutrients for up to five months. Great for container roses where only a tablespoonful or so would be required, to full size bushes where a handful would be appropriate…….once only, in early spring. No more hit and miss fertilizing, and mid season “blahs” when you suddenly decide your rose bushes need a boost.
2. Finger Pruning.
A simple procedure that is guaranteed to improve the look of your bushes and increase the size of the blooms and all you need is a pair of garden gloves…..actually I don’t even use those! The process is simple. As buds appear on stems, you will notice which direction they are going to send out the new growth. If it’s going to be a new stem that cuts horizontally across the centre of the bush, rub it off with your thumb. This keeps the open, vase shape of the bush. Keep the outward growing and remove the inward. The other thing to do is remove unwanted baby buds. This is particularly true with Tea roses or Floribundas. Often the early baby buds are overcrowded and growing into each other. Remove a few and let those that remain grow even bigger…..and always remove the centre one, as it matures first and you end up with a dead bloom in the centre of four or five half opened ones. Do this when the buds are new, green and soft enough to pinch out.
3. Dead-Heading.
Everyone knows this one but few people do it! Removing the dead blooms in a timely fashion not only makes the bush look good but it promotes more blooms. Leaving them on, acts as a signal to the bush that the end of the blooming season has arrived, and the production of hips is to start. You don’t want this to happen until the fall, so remove the dying blooms. Cut them just below the head, without removing any leaves which the bush needs. Then when the stem has lost all it’s blooms, take it down to the next new growth point, at about a short arms length….and make sure the new growth point is pointing outwards. Cut at an outward angle and this will promote new growth from just below the cut.
4. Liquid Organic Fertilizer.
Every two weeks you should apply a weak solution of organic liquid fertilizer, especially if your roses are in containers. In my area, liquid fish fertilizer is readily available, but whatever may be available in your area, use it at half strength. Check the label carefully and use at half the recommended dosage! Heavy watering and rain wash nutrients through the soil so they have to be replaced and this includes foliar feeding. Most roses enjoy a drenching of weak liquid organic fertilizer to keep them fresh and healthy.
5. Water, Water and Water.
Did I mention water? The magic ingredient to rose show quality blooms. Water long and deeply two or thee times a week unless your roses are in containers, then you need to water daily.
Remember the general rule: watering a rose bed for one hour soaks to a depth of 1 inch! If you can install under-bed soaker hoses so much the better. If you water overhead do it in the morning so the leaves can dry in the heat of the mid-day sun.
Water, Water and Water… someone told me that roses don’t have mouths so they have to drink the nutrients in the soil. If you don’t water, your roses don’t stand a chance of being “the best on the block”.
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3.“To Do” list: February
Depending on your area, you are either covered in snow or the buds have already started.
If you are in a colder area, keep this list for a later month!
1. Some of you begin pruning in February. If frosts are passed and/or your forsythia is blooming, go to it. Otherwise wait a month….no harm done.
2. Remove any mounds of soil/compost put around the roots for winter protection. Remove them when frosts are finished!
3. Clean up the beds. Remove the dead twigs, leaves and other debris. Weed and cover with a few inches of compost/steer manure/ whatever builds your soil and keeps the weeds down.
4. Spray with Dormant Oil and copper on a non-windy day to lessen bugs and fungal disease, held over from last year! Wait to spray after freezing temperatures and beware….it stains.
5. You could plant bare-root roses if the ground is workable…..soak for at least 8 hours in a bucket of water first. If it’s too cold, plant them in a large container and put it in the greenhouse or shed.
6. Get your tools ready. Sharpen the pruners and loppers. Clean up the shovels. Get your record books up to date and ready for the start of a new year of “fabulous, award winning roses” in your garden. Maybe plan your own Rose Pictures Calendar.
* Thought about going organic this year?
Click here for Organic Rose Gardening
* Looking at some new roses to plant in your rose bed….ever considered “Earth Kind" roses?
Click here for EarthKind Roses
* Need tools, gloves or some great “Mud” shoes?
Click here for Rose Gardeners tools
Click here for great gloves and a mud shoe
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4.Links and maybe some FREE stuff:
Q and A form
If you have questions, comments or are a webmaster who wants to link to our site,
Click to go to the Q and A page
The same link (above) will show you a very interesting gardening book that can be downloaded almost instantly!
You may not know this but there are many other interesting articles for Rose growers at these points:
Click for many more interesting articles for Rose growers
Click for a Gardeners article feed...ever changing article links
This site has a free calendar template with a beautiful rose picture: [and other free gardening calendar templates]
http://www.hooverwebdesign/free-printable-calendar-templates.html
(copy and paste the above into your browser)
**Next Issue:- March 15th 2008**
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Written by Dave Leach M.Ed.,
Owner/Editor of:
http://www.rose-works.com
copyright 2008 [Rose-Works]
Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada.
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