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When to cut back roses for the winter


Guide to Fertilizing Roses: When & How to Fertilize

Learn how fertilizer can help you get the most out of your roses By Janet Loughrey, Garden Writer & Photographer

Photo by: VH-studio / Shutterstock

To perform their best, roses need a continuous source of nutrients throughout the growing season. Healthy roses not only bloom better, they are better able to withstand insect and disease problems.

There are many different kinds of fertilizers, so it can be confusing to know how and when to fertilize your roses. Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of your roses.

NUTRIENTS THAT ROSES NEED

The primary nutrients (macronutrients) that all plants need are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K).

Nitrogen encourages healthy, vigorous leaf growth. Since a rose’s ability to make flowers resides in its leaves, healthy foliage results in more flowers. Too much nitrogen will result in too much foliage and fewer blooms, while not enough nitrogen results in yellow leaves, stunted growth and smaller blooms.

Phosphorus promotes healthy root development and abundant flower production. A shortage of phosphorous can result in leaf drop, weak flower stems, and buds that won’t open.

Potassium, also referred to as potash, helps roses recover when stressed by insect and disease damage, or by extreme weather conditions. Lack of potassium can result in yellow leaf margins, weak flower stems and poorly developed buds.

Other nutrients: In order to thrive, roses also need micronutrients including calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, copper, iron, manganese, and zinc.

HOW AND WHEN TO FERTILIZE ROSES

FOR NEWLY PLANTED ROSES:

  1. Amend the planting hole with rich organic matter.
  2. Work in a slow-release fertilizer according to package instructions along with a handful of bone meal for healthy root development.
  3. Sprinkle 1/4 to 1/2 cup of Epsom salts around the base of the plant to promote foliar and cane development.

Continue to fertilize every 3 to 4 weeks with a mild fertilizer such as fish emulsion. If a new plant dries out at all, full-strength fertilizers can cause leaf margins and root tips to burn.

FOR ESTABLISHED ROSES:

Early to mid-spring: Begin fertilizing when new leaves emerge. Use a high-nitrogen fertilizer or top dress with alfalfa meal (5-1-2) for the first application to jump-start leaf development, along with epsom salts to encourage new cane development and lusher growth. Add a slow-release fertilizer when shoots are 4 to 5 inches long.

Throughout the season: Continue to feed every 2 to 4 weeks during the growing season depending on the type of fertilizer used.

Late summer to early fall: Apply a slow-release fertilizer with low nitrogen content such as bone meal to promote root growth and next year’s blooms. Stop fertilizing 6 to 8 weeks before your average first frost date to prevent new growth from being damaged by frost.

FOR CONTAINER ROSES:

Because nutrients leach out more quickly due to more frequent watering, container roses may need fertilizing more often than those planted in the ground. (See more on how to grow roses in containers.)

More Ways to Keep Your Roses Healthy

WHAT IS THE BEST FERTILIZER FOR ROSES?

Organic fertilizers, which are derived from plant or animal matter, are better for the environment. These have different nutritional advantages and can be used alone or in combination as part of your rose-feeding regimen. Some also improve soil texture and support beneficial microbes.

Inorganic fertilizers (synthetic, chemical, or man-made) are ready-to-use and convenient, more concentrated and often less expensive than organic. However, these products don’t improve soil and have no positive residual effect. Some also contain insecticides and should be avoided all together, as they can harm wildlife.

ORGANIC ROSE FERTILIZERS:

There are many pre-packaged organic fertilizers especially formulated for roses that take the guesswork out of fertilizing. While all have a balanced blend of nutrients, some also contain essential trace minerals and beneficial microbes. Here are a few suggestions:

OTHER ORGANIC AMENDMENTS

"Organics make for the most beautiful roses and gardens," says Denise Kelly of Variegata Studios in Santa Rosa, CA. "But there can be a downside in that some products attract wildlife and pets. Bone meal and alfalfa pellets are especially attractive to dogs and raccoons, so I use alfalfa meal instead, which waters in more easily."

Oso Easy Double Red™.
Photo: Proven Winners® ColorChoice®.

OVERWHELMED BY FERTILIZER CHOICES AND SCHEDULES?

If sticking to a regular fertilizer schedule seems impractical, you can still grow beautiful roses by choosing low-maintenance varieties that need little or no fertilizing. Landscape roses are a simple way to add lots of color to your garden. Unlike hybrid teas, these resilient plants don’t require extensive fertilizing or other care.

Fertilizing landscape roses is easy: simply apply a controlled release fertilizer in early spring. That’s it! No need to overwork yourself with these easy-care varieties.

The Oso Easy® series is a great choice if you don’t want to deal with remembering to keep a fertilizing schedule, or deal with pruning or constant deadheading. Plus, they’re also highly disease resistant—which means no spraying either!

ADDITIONAL TIPS:

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How to Treat Black Spot on Roses

Learn how to prevent, manage, and treat black spot disease By Anne Balogh

Photo by Manfred Ruckszio / Shutterstock.com

If rose growers had a public enemy number one, it would surely be black spot—a menacing fungal disease that poses a threat to roses. Once black spot disease begins attacking your roses, it can be very difficult to control and manage. Here are some tips for controlling black spot and how to minimize its impact on the health, beauty, and longevity of your plants.

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WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF BLACK SPOT?

As the name implies, the first signs of black spot are irregularly shaped spots up to 1/2 inch in diameter, especially on the upper leaf surface. As the disease worsens, the leaves begin to yellow and eventually drop from the plant prematurely, usually beginning at the bottom and progressing upward. Over time, the entire plant may become defoliated and the canes can become infected as well.

WHAT CAUSES BLACK SPOT?

Like most fungal plant diseases, black spot (caused by the fungus Diplocarpon rosae) is brought on by a wet, humid environment and cool temperatures—conditions most likely to occur early in the growing season. If left unchecked, the loss of leaves can weaken your plants and inhibit bloom development.

Black spot usually won’t kill your plants during the first year or two, but if it continues unabated, it will make them more susceptible to other diseases and unable to survive harsh winters.

HOW TO PREVENT BLACK SPOT

Black spot can be very difficult to control once it's well established. Here are a few things you can do to help prevent black spot from infecting your roses:

If your roses do become infected, remove the diseased leaves and dispose of them. Also prune away and discard any infected canes. In the fall, remove all leaves and plant debris from your rose garden to prevent black spot from overwintering and returning in the spring, when new growth begins. Even a harsh winter won’t kill spores that may be lying dormant in your garden.

Pro Tip: Denise Kelly of Variegata Studios also suggests spraying rose bushes with liquid kelp to make the cuticle of the leaf tougher, and therefore less susceptible.

HOW TO TREAT BLACK SPOT

Photo by Yulia Derid / Shutterstock.com

Once you see the telltale signs of black spot, you can’t reverse the disease but you can stop the spread of infection to new leaves. The key to success for any treatment option is persistence:

  1. Start treating your roses early in the growing season.
  2. Respray them every week or two and after a heavy rain.
  3. Be sure to spray the entire plant, including the tops and bottoms of the leaves as well as the stems.
  4. Apply a dormant spray over winter to smother overwintering fungal spores.

Fungicide: There are a number of environmentally friendly organic products that do a good job at suppressing black spot, including sulfur, neem oil, and copper. Most products are available as foliar sprays or dusting powders and will control many types of fungal diseases. (Read more on how to use neem oil.)

Home remedies: In a pinch, you can formulate your own antifungal spray for treating black spot using ingredients commonly found in the kitchen. A Cornell University researcher demonstrated that a mixture developed for powdery mildew—1 tablespoon of baking soda mixed in a gallon of water, with a bit of horticultural oil or liquid soap added to help it cling to the leaves—is also effective for reducing the spread of black spot.

Some gardeners have reported varying degrees of success using sprays made of milk, vinegar, or hydrogen peroxide diluted with water. These homemade remedies may be worth a try, but we don't necessarily recommend them.

This publication from Purdue University Extension gives you tips for using organic fungicides and provides a list of commercially available products.

HOW DOES BLACK SPOT SPREAD?

Black spot spores are primarily spread from leaf to leaf and plant to plant by wind, but they won’t germinate without the presence of moisture. That’s why wet and humid conditions, especially over a prolonged period of time, are ideal conditions for black spot to take hold and spread freely.

Oso Easy Double Red™. Photo: Proven Winners.

GROW DISEASE-RESISTANT ROSES

If the thought of your roses becoming decimated by black spot (or other disease) sounds overwhelming, you don't have to forgo growing roses completely.

Oso Easy® landscape roses from Proven Winners are highly disease resistant and a great choice if you don’t want to deal with the constant worry of diseases ruining your rose bushes. They also don't require any fussy pruning, so they're "Oso Easy" to grow!

WHICH ROSES ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO BLACK SPOT?

All types of roses are fair game for black spot, but some cultivars are much more susceptible than others. The roses most resistant to the disease include floribundas, shrub roses, and climbing roses, while the least resistant are hybrid tea roses, grandifloras, and miniature roses, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension. In general, rose bushes with dense foliage or those with leaves that grow close to the ground are more prone to infestation than roses with an open, airy canopy.

WHICH ROSES ARE MORE RESISTANT TO BLACK SPOT?

Often the best approach to eliminating black spot in the garden is to replace your most vulnerable roses with newer disease-resistant hybrids, advises Peter Kukileski, author of Roses Without Chemicals, which lists 150 rose varieties that excel in gardens without the use of pesticides. Disease-resistant roses are also less susceptible to other common fungal ailments, such as powdery mildew, rust, and anthracnose.

The degree of resistance can vary depending on plant care, site conditions, and the local environment, but in most cases your disease-resistant roses won’t suffer much even if they do get black spot. "Some varieties of roses have a tendency that if they do get some black spot on their leaves, they won’t defoliate. The genetics of the plant are strong enough to keep the leaves on the plant even with disease,” says Kukileski.

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How to prune roses for the winter

Do you want your flower garden queens to look really regal next season? We will tell you how to prune roses for the winter so that they winter safely and without loss.

Roses are usually pruned in autumn in preparation for winter shelter. But inexperienced flower growers sometimes doubt whether it is necessary to do this at all or whether spring pruning can be dispensed with. Let's take a look at this contentious issue.

Is it necessary to prune roses for the winter

Autumn pruning of roses is carried out in order to prepare them for shelter, increase winter hardiness, provide shoots with access to light and strengthen plant immunity. The fact is that unripened shoots left for the winter on a bush can rot under the covering material. To prevent this from happening, in autumn (usually in the second half of October), all unripened, dry, damaged shoots that thicken the bush are removed from roses that need winter shelter and the remaining stems are shortened to the height of the covering material.

Both adult roses and seedlings planted this year are pruned for the winter. At the same time, it must be remembered that the bushes cannot be cut before the night frosts begin, since any pruning stimulates the growth of shoots.

Winter-hardy flowers (for example, wrinkled rose hybrids) winter well without shelter, so they are not pruned for the winter.

Rose wrinkled Alba does not need autumn pruning

How to prune a climbing rose for winter

Climbing rose shoots are cut as little as possible in autumn: they do not need to be adjusted to the height of the shelter, since the stems of the plant are bent to the ground.

How to prune park (bush) roses for the winter

Among the park roses there are many representatives of winter-hardy varieties that do not need shelter and, as a result, pruning for the winter. Their inflorescences, unripened, damaged shoots and small branches thickening the bush are minimally cut off.

How to cut hybrid tea roses for the winter

Shoots of hybrid tea roses are boldly shortened by half. You can even resort to strong pruning - the plants will winter well and quickly grow new branches in the spring. In addition, be sure to remove all young unripened shoots. Otherwise, the bush may die.

Remove all pruned shoots from the site and burn them: they may contain pests and pathogens

How to prune floribunda roses for the winter

Quite often, floribunda roses still bloom in mid-autumn. But if the cold has already come, then do not spare the flowers, cut them off and prepare the bushes for shelter.

Autumn pruning options for floribunda roses depend on what kind of bush you want to get next year. If you shorten the shoots much, then less tall, but lush bushes will grow, evenly strewn with flowers. With light pruning (if you cut only a small part of the stem under the inflorescences), a tall and slender bush will bloom next season with a lot of flowers only in its upper part.

How to prune ground cover roses for the winter

Ground cover roses that spread along the ground do not need autumn pruning. For the winter, they only remove flowers.

How to prune indoor roses for the winter

Indoor roses need a rest in winter. In autumn, they stop feeding it, gradually reduce watering, prune, transfer the plant to a bright room with an air temperature of 10-15 ° C and keep it there until spring.

During the autumn pruning of a room rose, 4-6 buds are left on each healthy shoot, small shoots are completely removed or 2-3 buds are left on them.

If a large number of shoots are left, small flowers will bloom on a lush bush next season. And on a bush with several shoots, larger roses will bloom. After all, under cover, the leaves can rot and infect plants with fungal diseases. It is important not to damage the kidney! If the leaves are firmly attached to the bush, carefully break off the petiole with a sideways movement.

Nevertheless, the main pruning of roses is carried out in the spring. At the same time, the bush is given the desired shape. We wrote about this in more detail in one of our materials.

when and how to prune roses in the Moscow region, the Urals and Siberia

There are 3 main types of pruning:

Sanitary and anti-aging pruning is usually carried out in autumn. But you can also make a formative one.

When to prune roses in autumn

The best time to prune roses in the middle lane is late October - early November. Previously, this should not be done, because the removal of shoots in warm weather can provoke the growth of new ones. But in the middle of autumn, when it is already cold, you can form roses without fear.

In October, it is definitely necessary to carry out sanitary pruning - remove all diseased (blackened, with cracked bark), damaged (broken), weak and too thin shoots. You also need to cut out too old shoots.

But as for the forming pruning, rose growers argue here. The literature recommends that it be done in the spring (1). However, there are problems here. Firstly, in the spring there is always an emergency - there is already a lot of work, and pruning roses takes a lot of time. Secondly, uncircumcised roses are very difficult to cover - the shoots must be laid on the ground and pinned. But this is not always possible - in some varieties the stems are so thick and strong that it is impossible to bend them down, they break. In addition, before sheltering roses, you need to cut off the leaves, and this is a very laborious process!

Autumn pruning does not cause such problems. And it is easier to cover the bushes - just pour sawdust over the cut shoots. Many summer residents have been doing just that for many years, and their roses winter wonderfully and bloom luxuriously next summer.

How to prune roses in autumn

There are 3 options for shaping roses.

Strong (short). In this case, the bush is cut almost “on a stump” - only 1 - 2 well-developed buds are left at the base.

It is usually done before planting bushes. And in the same way thick two-year-old shoots are cut. With such pruning of shoots, the rose produces less shoots, but they are more powerful and with large flowers.

Moderate (medium). With this option, the shoots are shortened by half, usually 4-6 buds are left on them.

It is usually used to form young roses - 2 years after planting.

Weak (long). In this case, in fact, only the tops of the shoots are cut, leaving 8 - 10 buds.

With such pruning, the bush (provided that it has wintered well) turns out to be more lush, blooms earlier, but its flowers are smaller.

Pruning also depends on whether the variety belongs to a particular group of roses. But there are also general rules:

Pruning climbing roses in autumn

First of all, all old (3-5-year-old) branches are removed from such roses - only 4-6 young ones, 1-2 years old, should be left. And they are shortened by 10 - 15 cm (1).

Pruning hybrid tea roses in autumn

A well-formed bush of such roses should have no more than 5 strong shoots, all the rest should be cut. In vigorous varieties, 8-10 buds are left on each shoot (2). In low bushes, annual shoots are cut to 3 - 5 buds, in 2 - 4-year-olds 2 - 3 buds are left.

Pruning spray roses in autumn

Leave 3 to 7 strongest stems for these roses. Half of them are shortened by 1/2. The rest are cut off the tops with 3 - 5 buds. As a result, the root should have shoots of different lengths.

Pruning of park roses in autumn

Only broken branches and shoots are cut from park roses, which thicken the crown. You don't need to shorten them.

Pruning floribunda roses in autumn

Roses in this group are left with the 5 strongest stems, all the rest must be cut. Half of the shoots are cut short, leaving 2 - 3 buds - powerful shoots will grow from them, which will bloom in August. The rest are not shortened so much, they should have 5 - 7 buds - they will give flowers earlier, already in July.

Pruning ground cover roses in autumn

These roses are cut only for thin and thick shoots. At the same time, bushes can be formed - give them the desired shape.

Popular Questions and Answers

We talked about autumn pruning of roses with agronomist-breeder Svetlana Mikhailova.

When to prune roses in the suburbs?

Approximate date - end of October - beginning of November. But it's not the specific dates that matter, but the weather. The ideal time for pruning is when there is a slight frost outside, the temperature is about -5 ° C. And, of course, there must be dry weather - you can’t cut roses in the rain.

When to prune roses in the Urals?

In the Urals, roses are usually pruned in mid-October, after a slight frost (-5 °C), in clear, dry weather.

When to prune roses in Siberia?

Siberia is a very large region and weather conditions vary greatly there. In areas where snow falls early, pruning can be done as early as September. Where the heat lasts longer - in October. Again, it is not the specific dates that are important, but the air temperature - it is better to prune when it drops to -5 ° C.

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