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From my Garden, March 2004 Don’t know about you but I’m ready for spring. I solve my craving to get out in the dirt by ordering roses for delivery at the end of February, then potting them in my greenhouse, where they sit, still dormant, until the weather warms. In the greenhouse, sun shining through the plastic warms up the inside quite a bit even on very cold days. I’ve experienced temperatures of 80% inside when it’s below freezing outside. The colder temps now hold the potted roses in a dormant condition until mid March when they leaf out and I usually have hybrid tea roses blooming by the middle or end of April. I prune outside when the forthysia bloom which occurs here about the middle of April in a normal spring. I usually prune very severely. Severe pruning gives you a shorter fuller bushier rosebush with longer canes and larger flowers. I fertilize with an organic fertilizer such as Mills Magic when I prune. Mills takes some warm days and warm soil to begin breaking down into a form that the roses can use. Applying horse manure can also be done when pruning as it also needs warm soil to work properly. Except for Osmocote, do not apply chemical fertilizers when doing your spring pruning. Many tiny feeder roots are lost during the bitter cold of winter. As these begin to grow in the spring, chemical fertilizers can burn the newly formed roots and cause the bush to die. I’ve lost more bushes to spring feeding of chemical fertilizers, before I learned from experience, than I ever did from winter kill. Osmocote, like natural fertilizers does not release until the soil warms. If you use Osmocote, purchase the six month release so it’s pretty well done by late August. Nine or twelve month release feeds too long into the fall. You want the bushes to begin hardening off in fall not continue to grow. I have 120 bareroot roses coming the end of February and am picking up 50 ownroot Explorer roses from Great Lakes Roses in mid March. 20 of the 120 I’m getting from Edmunds are hardy Parkland or Buck rose, Distant Drums and Morden Blush. They will be grafted so will need to have the graft planted deep to properly survive our winters. The graft is the weak point even on hardy roses. The graft point is the meeting of two slightly dissimilar tissues. Moisture when freezing can cause separation of these tissues. Separation stops the transference of water and nutrients from the roots to the canes, thus resulting in death of the grafted top. By planting the graft 4 to 6 inches deep it’s protected from a bitter cold freeze. This also permits the canes growing from the graft to be in contact with the soil and promotes rooting. When I moved my roses from Griffith to Wheatfield, many of the deep planted grafted roses had own rooted. In a few cases I was able to get up to 5 own root bushes from the original grafted plant. A bush that goes own root this way will form a pseudo bud union at the soil surface where the canes will grow from. Another trick I’ve learned over the years is that I can prune earlier than normal if I take a few precautions. I’ve pruned in mid-March in warmer than normal springs by pulling the winter soil cover or leaves back over the pruned bush to protect it from late cold snaps. It’s true that pruning promotes leafing out but Mother Nature will not allow that to happen until the soil warms up. By recovering the bush you keep the soil around the newly pruned roses cool. They will usually not leaf out until it’s safe from a hard freeze. One more tip regarding spring leafing. There are lots of sugars in those newly formed leaves. Sugar acts as a natural antifreeze so a late frost may nip the edges of your new leaves but will not kill them. I trust Mom Nature, she takes care of her own. When my roses begin to leaf out in the spring I don’t worry about cold snaps. Have Questions? Write to: rosenut@rosenut.com |