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Simply Gardening
by Doug Green
Cheating Your Way to Great Roses

Jan. 18, 2000 -- Someone asked me the other day how I managed to grow such lovely roses in my garden. I wandered around in my explanation not wanting to sound too stupid because I'm supposed to be a good gardener and be able to explain stuff like that. I mean, I wrote a book about roses and I'm currently working on a second -- I should have answers. Clear answers. Definitive answers. Well, I do. And, after thinking about it for a while, I've decided to tell you my secret. Its not very hard to do and there's no special skills involved.

You see, I cheat.

The Dictionary defines "cheat" as "to avoid something by luck or cunning." And, I'm one of the luckiest gardeners around and when it comes to roses, :"cunning" is my middle name. (actually its Charles -- my mother didn't know I'd grow up to be a rose grower). If you want to join me in tricking a rose or two, here's my main secrets.

I feed them. Now, most rose books will tell you to use a good rose food and apply it at such and such an interval. Heck, roses can't read labels -- they'll eat anything at any time. I use several things to get my roses to perform in the garden. The first is compost. Every rose gets several large shovels of compost first thing in the spring before they really start growing. I just throw it around the base of the rose with my trusty shovel. No artful arranging or worrying about making sure each rose gets the same amount. Just me, toss it on and hope the rose appreciates it. Compost not only feeds the rose but it encourages the microorganisms in the soil to grow and fight off the bacteria that want to feed on the rose.

Compost is the number one disease fighting material in my garden and the more I put on, the less problems I have with my plants. There is a lot of university research going on around the world right now on compost and its disease preventing abilities. Some researchers have shown it acts as a fungus killer when sprayed onto plants. Its good stuff and the more you use, the luckier you and your roses will get.

During the season, I feed all my large flowering roses with a liquid fish emulsion. It doesn't matter whether they are in a large pot (I grow a few roses in big clay pots around our front door) or in the ground, they get a weekly feeding (when I remember) of fish emulsion. Now this stuff smells . . . like fish. But, it has all the minor trace elements that your rose is craving and you won't believe the blooms that come when you start feeding this stuff. If you can't remember to do a weekly feeding, that's OK, just cheat as often as you can. Fish emulsion is available through garden centres or large garden shops. Follow the label directions for mixing because you can, with a bit too much enthusiasm, apply excess amounts in your zeal for getting too many nice blossoms. Your plants will not thank you for the killing dose. I use a tablespoon a gallon and this seems to do the job.

The other thing I do is to plant the rose depending on its hardiness. This is where I trick my roses. Because my garden is cold (USDA zone 4) my tender roses get buried so the bud union is four to six inches deep. This protects them over the winter and as long as I'm feeding them well, they'll bloom like crazy for me. They simply think they're permanently hilled for winter. They don't die and they keep throwing new canes. Have I got them fooled! Hardy roses like the Explorers or Rugosa roses get planted so their bud unions are only an inch or two deep. They're tough enough that no amount of freezing is going to kill them anyway so I don't bother trying to fool them to think its warm outside. The really, really tender ones get grown in pots and moved into the solar greenhouse for the winter. The greenhouse is cold enough so the roses will go dormant but not cold enough to kill them. Attached garages that do not freeze or cold cellars work equally well.

After feeding and planting, there is one more despicable thing I do to my roses. I prune them harder than almost any book recommends. The basic rule to all plant pruning is that the harder you prune, the more new growth you'll create. The harder you prune a rose, the more new growth you'll create and more new growth equals more new flowers. When I deadhead my large flowering roses in the summer, I take at least a twelve inch stem along with the spent blossom. There is no hesitation here, take the long cut and take it right down into good strong canes. Oh, yes, I do follow the old rule about always trying to cut to an outward facing bud and keeping the centre of the rose open. However, if a good outward facing bud isn't available when I get down to my cutting length-- I just keep on going down the cane until I find one. If that means my deadheading cut turns out to be eighteen inches long-- so be it. The rose will be tricked into throwing new canes anyway and they'll be wonderfully strong ones to support all the blossoms I'm feeding it to produce.

I do love giving roses to the love of my life and that's how I cheat to make sure I've always got a good supply.

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