How to Plant and Grow Roses
Roses are tough plants and can survive with minimal care. However, it you want your roses to be healthy, grow, and bloom, you should plan to spend some time caring for them. The more effort you give, the more the roses give back. Design a rose care regimen that suits your lifestyle and level of interest in gardening.
Planting Roses
Watering
Mulching
Fertilizing
Pruning
Deadheading
How to Plant a Container Rose
Plant a rose right and it will reward you with beautiful flowers for years. There are different requirements for planting bare-root and container roses. The following directions apply only to container roses.
Choose a Sunny Well-Drained Location: Choose a spot that gets a minimum of 5-6 hours of sun each day. This is a must! Roses that do not get enough sunlight tend to be lanky and make few, if any, flowers. Also choose a site that drains well. One sure way to kill a rose is to drown its roots in poorly drained soil.
Dig a Big Hole: Dig a hole about 2 ft. wide and 2 ft. deep. Plant roots tend to stay inside the holes that they are planted in, so dig a big one to give your rose roots room to spread. The more area the roots cover, the better the rose can absorb water and nutrients.
Prepare the Soil: Use approximately 1/3 of the soil removed from the hole, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 compost or other organic humus to fill the hole.
Set the Plant: Fill the hole with enough soil mixture so that the soil in the pot will sit level with the surrounding area. Set the potted plant in the hole and add or remove soil as needed.
Remove the Plant from the Pot: Squeeze the container to loosen the plant, then place one hand over the surface and turn upside down, catching the rose as it slides from the pot. Do not hold the plant by the stem.
Set the plant in place.
Fill Hole and Water: Fill the area around the roots with the remaining soil mixture, pat firm with your hands, then use a gentle spray of water to completely soak the newly planted rose. Do not step on the soil around the plant in an effort to remove air pockets as it may injure the plant. The water soaking through the soil mixture will take care of any air pockets.
Remember: If your rose has been shipped to you, you may plant it right away, but do not use any fertilizer for the next month while the rose adjusts.
Watering
Newly planted roses benefit from watering 2-3 times a week until established. Afterwards, roses like a good deep watering (several inches) once or twice a week if there is no rain. Watering at the base of the plants helps to keep the foliage dry and resist diseases.
Mulching
Adding mulch to your rose beds helps prevent the topsoil from becoming too dry, reduces the amount of watering you must do, keeps the soil cool in hot weather, and reduces weeds.
Some suitable mulches include shredded bark (uses nitrogen as it decomposes, so suplement your fertilizer with nitrogen), compost (great source of nutrients), dried grass clippings (cheap and readily available), shredded leaves (whole leaves tend to mat), and pine needles (add lime to offset the acidity). Use whatever is available and inexpensive in your area.
Fertilizing
Roses are heavy feeders. A regular program of fertilizer will give your roses the energy they need to grow and produce flowers. Organic or inorganic fertlizers are suitable, and many gardeners use a combination of the two.
Organic fertilizers release their nutrients slowly as they decompose and have the added benefit of improving the soil condition. Nutrients are immediately available from inorganic fertilizers, unless they are designated time-release or slow-release fertilizers, but continual heavy use can result in a toxic buildup of salts.
We recommend using both slow-release and instant fertilizers. Apply slow-release fertilizers in early spring and late summer, using organic fertilizers for one or both of the applications if it is available. Use instant fertilizers at the recommended rate in addition to the slow-release fertilizer, but only on established plants.
Remember, with fertilizer, more is not necessarily better. Inorganic liquid fertilizers in high concentrations can burn roots and foliage, especially if a rose is under stress due to heat or drought. For smaller plants or during extreme weather, use half-strengh fertilizer.
Pruning
Although modern hybrid tea and floribunda roses do best with hard pruning in early spring, old garden roses do not. In fact, some, like tea and china roses, resent hard pruning. A few spring pruning tips:
Remove dead and old wood: For all your roses, remove any dead growth. On well-established roses, remove one or two of the oldest canes to promote new basal growth.
Shape as Needed: Prune away branches that cross awkwardly or grow toward the center of the bush. The goal is to have an attractive shape with good air flow to help prevent disease.
Reduce Size: Even when light tip pruning will suffice, branches may be cut back to reduce the overall size if needed or desired Just be sure to cut above an outward facing bud.
Don't be scared to prune! Cutting promotes new growth and will not hurt your roses. Roses are very forgiving of mistakes and grow quickly so you will have plenty of opportunities to try different techniques.
Deadheading
To promote faster rebloom, deadhead your roses. That is, remove spent blooms to keep your rose from spending energy developing hips, which hold seeds.
For larger branches, such as those on some hybrid musk, floribunda, and hybrid tea roses, cut the stem below the flower and just above the first outward facing bud at the base of a leaf with 5-leaflets.
For twiggy branches, such as on china, tea, and some noisette roses, simply pinching of the faded bloom is sufficient. If you wish to let your rose develop hips in fall, do not deadhead after the last bloom at the end of summer.