Ms. Eudora’s Garden Tool Blog

There is no magical Green Thumb needed when it comes to growing roses, beautiful roses. Roses love water and a regular fertilizer feeding so keep these two factors in mind and your reward will be healthy plants with beautiful blossoms.

With over 2000 varieties of roses to choose from each with its own distinctive fragrance, selecting which to plant can be a difficult challenge.  The plants growth habit and what’s it going to look like in your garden after its planted should be taken into consideration.  Remember that soil types vary by regions and that dark red color you get in the south may become a deep pink in the north.

Knowing the differences in varieties is also important, a climber or rambler, a hybrid tea, a floribunda or an ever bloomer all have distinctive growing conditions, so knowing what you are planting is very important.  Select an area of your garden where you plan to plant your roses and know what your flowering blooms will look like to compliment the rest of the flower garden.

Roses can grow from 10 inches to 36 inches tall in the miniature varieties to 2 feet high for dwarf roses and 2 to 3 feet high for hybrids and floribundas while climbers and ramblers can grow from 7 to 30 feet in length.

Again, make sure you know what you want to plant and where. Once that decision gas been made read your planting instructions carefully and talk with your local nursery owner, they will tend to give you the best advice on what will grow best in your particular region.

Knowing the blooming period is equally important because you will want more than the one rush of blooms during bloom time and more than the common three weeks of blossoms in June, you will of course want to enjoy your roses all summer and into fall. There are 5 basic things to remember when growing roses:

1. Roses should get plenty of sunshine ( 6 to 8 hours per day)
2. Plant them in rich loose soil with lots of nutrients (manure mixed into the soil with compost)
3. Nutrients I prefer dried blood and bone meal (found at garden centers or nurseries)
4. Water roses well, roses love water, so plant them in well draining soil, and water at the base to avoid getting the leaves wet ( a drip or soaker hose is best )
5. Mulch well when and after planting, mulch will hold water in and keep weeds out.

A little tip: don’t plant all your roses at once, I prefer to plant a week or two apart, this lengthens my blooming time because you get a continuance of blooms because they don’t all bloom at once.

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