5 Growing Techniques for Rose Gardens

5 Growing Techniques for Rose Gardens

For a flourishing rose garden, it’s important to master a few key growing techniques. Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced gardener, let this guide serve as a tool to help you succeed in your rose gardening journey.   

Understanding Your Soil

To set your rose garden up for success, you’ll want to ensure the soil quality is top notch. This means equipping it with all the nutrients necessary for healthy growth. 

How can you tell if your soil meets the standard? Conduct a soil test to determine the pH levels and see which nutrients are lacking. Roses grow best in slightly acidic environments – with a pH level of somewhere between 6.5-7.0. Add ammonium-based fertilizer, elemental sulfur, or peat moss to lower it if too high, or use nitrate-based fertilizer or ground limestone to raise it if too low. You can buy a soil test kit from your local garden center or online.  

Watering Techniques 

The key to watering your roses is deeply but infrequently. This gives your roses an adequate water supply to stay hydrated, but allows them to dry a little throughout the day – preventing root rot or disease. Water 2-3 times per week until the rose is established.  

Roses are thirsty plants – requiring 3-5 gallons of water per week to maintain their blooms. In hot climates, they may require slightly more than that. Just remember to keep waterings spaced out to avoid excessive moisture retention.  
 
Since excess moisture can cause disease, It’s best to water early in the morning to allow the foliage time to dry out. Watering at the base of the plant instead of overhead also prevents the foliage from getting too wet.  

Irrigation Methods 

For maximum efficiency, consider ground-level watering methods such as drip irrigation or soaker hoses. Both of these techniques save time, water, and reduce the risk of fungal infection. 

Drip irrigation: Best for long-term garden installations, drip irrigation is a reliable method that uses tubes made from polypipe with evenly spaced drippers along the length. Inside is a dripper unit that’s designed to emit a fixed amount of water per hour for an even watering.  
Soaker hose: Better for short to medium-term garden installations, soaker hoses are made from porous rubber that allows water to seep steadily and evenly into the soil. This is a cheaper alternative to drip irrigation and will work well for smaller gardens.  

Pruning for Health and Aesthetics 

As the winter comes to a close and spring arrives in your region, you’ll want to give your roses a proper trimming. Pruning is essential to promoting healthy growth on your rose and encouraging beautiful new blooms.  
 
Exactly when to prune will depend on the climatic conditions of your hardiness zone. Check out our Guide to Hardiness Zones & What They Mean to find out which zone you’re located in and understand the topic in more detail.  

The important steps to take for pruning your rose bushes are: 

  • Use clean, sharp pruners (such as Felcos) to prevent damage and avoid spreading any disease – especially if you’re pruning several bushes.  

  • Cut out any dead, dying, diseased, or crossing canes.  

  • Take out thin, spindly branches that won’t be strong enough to support blooms.

Fertilizing Strategies

Fertilizing your roses is one of the best things you can do to promote healthy growth. With the right balance of key nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), they’ll bloom to their fullest and have a better chance at fending off pests and disease.  

When to Fertilize Your Roses  

We recommend fertilizing your roses once every 4 weeks. For spring fertilizing, start during the last frost period to kickstart healthy growth right before temperatures rise and your roses awaken. In the fall, stop fertilizing 4 weeks before the first frost to let the rose wind down before going to sleep for the winter.  
 
After applying fertilizer, water your rose deeply so that the roots soak up all the nutrients it needs. 

Liquid vs. Granular Fertilizer 

Liquid fertilizer is best for new roses. Granular fertilizer gets hot and can burn the roots of a young plant. Only use granular fertilizer in the 2nd year that a rose is planted in the ground. 

How to Tell if Your Roses Need More Nutrients

Signs that your roses are lacking the proper nutrients could be yellowing or discolored leaves, curling and premature falling of leaves, and reduced growth and flowering. 

Pest and Disease Management 

Us humans aren’t the only ones who love roses. There are a number of pests that you’re likely to see clinging onto the buds and foliage throughout the season. And while tough and hardy plants, roses are also susceptible to various fungal diseases. 
 
These are common issues and nothing to panic over. For a more detailed look into pest and disease management, head over to our post on treating common rose plant diseases.

Mulching and Winter Protection 

Saying goodnight to our roses for the winter is never easy, but it’s an important time for them to get their beauty rest and come back revitalized for the following spring season. In preparation for the cold temperatures, mulching is one of the most important things you can do to make sure your roses stay warm.  
 
Have a look at our Winter Rose Care Guide to learn more about mulching and winter protection. 

Propagation and Grafting 

Just one rose simply isn’t enough. After your first one comes to life, you’re bound to want more. Two of the most common methods for efficiently producing more roses are propagating roses from cuttings and grafting roses.  

Propagating Roses from Cuttings 

 
Growing roses from cuttings is an easy and budget-friendly way to turn one rose into multiple. If you have a rose that’s doing particularly well in your garden, you can take the cutting from that rose and create another that’s genetically identical to it.  

For detailed, step-by-step instructions on the process, head over to our post on How to Grow Roses from Cuttings.  

Grafting Roses  

A very popular technique of propagating roses, grafting is essentially taking one rose and mixing it with another. This is an excellent way to produce rose bushes with more than one color.  
 
The steps to grafting a rose are: 

  1. Identify a healthy rose that you will graft onto the rootstock of the other rose. 

  1. Remove any dead foliage, blooms, or stems from your rootstock. 

  1. With a sterilized knife or blade, cut a bud eye off of the stem. 

  1. Cut a T-shaped hole into the rootstock of the rose you will be grafting onto.  

  1. Insert the bud eye into the T-shaped hole 

  1. With grafting tape, wrap above and below the bud eye to secure it into the rootstock.  
     

This growing season, implement these tried-and-true techniques and watch your rose garden bloom bigger and better than ever before. Head over to April & Ashley to browse our wide variety of premium rose bushes – delivered straight from our farm to your doorstep.  

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