Tips for maintaining the health of garden roses

Roses are beautiful flowers that deserve the best of care. These maintenance tips help to ensure that the roses in your garden are the most beautiful they can be.

• Remove any winter protection from roses on a cloudy, overcast day; too much sun and warmth can give the plants a real shock after a long winter's rest.
• Fertilize your roses in early to mid-spring.
• Use water-soluble fertilizers only when the weather is damp.
• Nurture roses with manure and water: add 250 millilitres (one cup) of dried cow manure to eight litres/quarts of water, and let soak for a couple of days. Dilute the liquid so it is the colour of weak tea and pour on the root area.
• Rake finely-chopped banana peels into the soil to provide the plants with lime, magnesium, sulfur, nitrogen, potassium, phosphate and silicic acid.
• Water your roses thoroughly, but not daily, during dry times. Depending on its size, during periods of drought a rose plant will need 10 to 20 litres/quarts of water per week to produce luxuriant blooms.
• Never water roses from above; this may produce fungal diseases.
• Prevent fungal diseases by spraying roses in the morning with a solution of five millilitres (one teaspoon) of baking powder in four litres/quarts of water. Adding two to three drops of soap blends the solution more effectively.
• Stop fertilizing roses at least one month before the first annual frost date. Fertilizing too long into autumn encourages roses to produce tender new growth that will get nipped by the cold.
• Keep bush roses from lifting in the winter by covering the root crown with compost. Tie large bush roses or climbing roses with string to keep them from breaking in the wind or under a heavy load of snow.

Cut roses properly to encourage growth and the formation of blossoms.

• Use protective gloves (such as long-sleeved ones meant for thorny bushes) and good clippers; it's particularly easy to injure yourself when cutting climbing or bush roses.
• Twist off wild shoots that sprout from the ground right at the base.
• Remove prunings immediately from the garden, as they can be a haven for insects and disease pathogens. Add this garden waste to the household trash, rather than the compost pile, since many disease pathogens can withstand even the high temperatures inside the compost.
• Cut back bush roses by about a third in the fall to produce bushier growth.

Regional climate permitting, in the fall a number of rose varieties, including Rosa canina, Rosa rubiginosa and Rosa rugosa form large, shiny red rose hips, as long as the spring blooms aren't cut off. These fruits look attractive, but also make excellent purées and fruit teas.