Rose Fertilising

As we are getting closer to the time of year when we prune our roses I thought it appropriate to ask this question, 'what do you fertilise your roses with and when'. I guess I should add when do you prune and without giving your steet address, what town are you in. This is to see the diversity of area when we prune.
I hope all our members contribute to this.
I will start this off by saying some of mine will not get pruned if I do not get around to it. I hopefully will do ours on the 28th of July after some pruning committments. As for fertilisers, this year will be the first for years, I am going to try a combination of liquid and dry. This is going to placed on straight after pruning or maybe a week or two before so as the soil warms the plant can take it up. One of the liquids I am thinking of is "GOGO juice and some of the Seasol range"

hey david, most of my roses will get pruned on july. some are still far too small so i will let em shoot up till next year , as for fertilliser havent really thought about it just yet , not really sure what to use or whats good to give em a good kick start

jordan do you have a plan to prune any of those plants that you have brought this year?

After I do the major prune in winter, I feed with 6 month Osmocote and either Dynamic Lifter or Rapid Raiser or similar. Then throughout the year, I feed with DL or RR as they finish each flush.
Barbara B

neptune wrote:jordan do you have a plan to prune any of those plants that you have brought this year?

no neptune they are far too small , there is only few that getting quite big they will get a bit of prunning

Some good things to think about.

I've been a pretty slack/lazy gardener over the years and there were several winters I didn't get any pruning (or weeding...) done for various reasons. The lack of weeding probably affected the roses more! LOL

I'm heading towards the way that Simon was talking about for pruning ( [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ) as this suits my time availability and, I think, caters for the frost risk better here. By doing it this way I hope to have more blooms available by show time... (our local Ag show) if I prune late then I ruin my chances of blooms by mid October if the season is slow.

Fertiliser.... has been a touch, shall we say, ad hoc. They've had manures, Impact and I've started on the GoGo juice which really does seem to be effective here. I may need to throw a bit of potash and magnesium around this year.

I know people in the garden club (Benalla) that have mostly HTs and prune in July and fertilise the eyeballs out of the roses over the year. (And spray the living daylights out of them too - I'm waaaay to lazy for that!)

Not too sure. Some of the roses we have moved recently have been pruned and are responding well. Other teas have had a light prune and the rest might not get too much. The teas beside the driveway near the carport have not been pruned for a couple of years so I may do those. In our climate and with the varities we grow you can prune anytime of the year.

Fertilizer will depend on finances. Last year they got spoilt with a feed but did not do as well as the year before when they missed out. I would like to give them all a feed of Potash as this gets the flowers going. A good dose of lime would go down well but I would probably need a ton.

AutumnDamask wrote:I know people in the garden club (Benalla) that have mostly HTs and prune in July and fertilise the eyeballs out of the roses over the year. (And spray the living daylights out of them too - I'm waaaay to lazy for that!)

I was talking a a bloke over at Big W at lunchtime and he was looking at the bare root roses. He lives 100m from the ocean and his soil is beach sand. He tells me that he buys roses every couple of years and continuoulsy feeds them and they go great for two years then he pulls them out and does it again. He only has a few and at $8 a pop he said is not costing him a fortune. He said he did not bother spraying them as the salt seems to do more damage than blackspot!!

I told him that we have over 200 different varieties out of about 300 -400 or so plants (no actually sure how many we have) and never spray, hardly feed and how some of the teas are 7 metres in diameter and 4 metres high. I told him it is more getting the varieties that suit you conditions and you will find a lot of the hard work is done for you.

Im the same as the Big W guy...I live on the coast and the biggest problem I have is salt, roaring sea breeze winds and the proverbial yellow beach sand. Ans yes Gary, your are right about finding about a rose to suit your area. I have discharge so many roses back to pots and given to the church raffle. I have yet found a rose that suits our conditions,....but I am open to suggestions

neptune
I suggested maybe some of the roses buddied in WA on the rootstock that grows well in sand (can't remeber its name) may be an option but I guess not.

its hard Gary...all our roses are on fortuniana rootstock, but I don't think they took coastal, coastal areas into consideration....

Yeah thats it "fortuniana". Is that rootstock good in sand?

they grow it for the west coast...

Gary, you mention Potash, a couple of questions on that, do you think it worked or would you think it takes sometime to see it's influence and did you change the rate depending on the size of the plant.

I received a trial bucket of this product last year at our Field Days to try and so far am impressed with it. I am on very heavy black loam which is hungry for food, lucerne grows like weed. It is available for the home garden as well as commercially.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

David

The problem that I could possibly see it the reliance of the plant on the ground where the gell is (ie the gell absorbs and then releases water etc and thus the plants roots would tend top want to stay in that local instead of spreading out).

With regard to Potash (Potassium Sulphate?) there are two types usually available. Quick release water soluable and the slower release granular stuff. Potassium is important for water and nutirent absorption and general plant health and flowering. Generally a good NPK fertilizer does the job but sometimes it helps to give a dose of potash as well. A longtime rose grower told me about it many years ago.

I think it does help the flowering but then again this could also be due to more (or less) rainfall during the important times. I have used both the soluable (lot more expensive but you do see faster results) and the non soluable (not that big an issue with the rain we get).

Whic probably brings up another issue. In areas of high rainfall how fast does the fertilizeer get washed away/leeched out of the soil?

I live in Melbourne , and i will be pruning first week of July , i don't usually fertilise till Spring , i follow the Victorian Rose Society month by month guide . This year i have used Munash Rockdust and Renew on everything , seems to have given everything extra vigour . I hate spraying for black spot , so expensive and time consuming and it doesn't work . I've given up , if a rose bush is that way inclined out it comes , trouble is most of em get it , some a lot worse than others . I found Violina and Olde Fragrance good at resisting black spot , not completely but at least they don't exfoliate like some , namely Mary Rose and Chartreusse De Parme ..

Oh i forgot , when i remember in Spring, Summer , i use Sudden Impact , cow manure , Munash Rockdust and Renew and Seasol ......

Gary, in relation to the gel, it does not absord water from what I understand and can last for a couple of years. at the Field Days I will get some more feedback on it.

Maree, excuse my ignorance, what is "Munash Rockdust"

often it is not important what is used as long as something goes on remembering good soil organics will mean a better reaction to fertiliser by the plant

roseman , Munash Rockdust is a mineral fertiliser and Renew is its liquid brother , great for the whole garden , use when planting and just when needed after that .... Google it , i like it ....

This is a pretty open subject and it depends what you are going to do with your roses. As I show my roses, I'm looking to find a fertilizer combination that will give me what I need in the time that I need it. With a few different beds, all in a certain area, I can experiment with different fertilizers and see where that leads me.....

John, not to promote any one company, but if it was me I would approach the odd company or two or three and express your words to them as you have in the above post. As mention about the 'gel' I was given to trial I am going to approach the company for a 10kg bucket for application in bed of rootstock.

David, most Rose Societys around Australia get a "special" deal from the makers from Sudden Impasct for roses. I have a problem with there product ratio of NPK.......from what I can gather and read from the scientific world , the best NPK ratio for roses 1:2:1. Impact ratio is 9:4:12, which means it is promoting the leaf and flower of the bush and little on promoting the root system of the bush. We also know that too much leaf doesn't promote to bigger and beautiful blooms.

I talked to the neutrog sales representative on two occassions about this and he was going to find out for me. On the second time he gave me the email address of the owner of neutrog and put the question to him. So far , I haven't heard a word from him....it seems I am to below him to have the question answered....

John, there is a saying which no doudt you and others have heard, which goes something like this "give a dog a bone. Can you give me some details either here or by PM as I think that stinks. We maybe only a small forum, BUT, word gets around.