Contrary to popular belief, roses are simple creatures with basic needs like…
SUN: You’ve heard it said over and over …. LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. Pick a spot with 6 – 8 hours of sun!
WATER: All living things need water. The best tip for watering I can give you is—water deeply. Shallow watering leads to shallow roots—which leads to plants that are more susceptible to dry conditions. Send those roots down deep!
NUTRITIOUS SOIL: This is the most important part! Good soil is the best gift you can give your plants. Roses don’t like like “wet feet,” (Neither do most other plants!), so drainage is key. For those of you in my region (midwest Zone 5) you are probably dealing with clay soil. Amend clay soils with compost and aged manure.
DEADHEADING: To keep your roses blooming throughout the season, remove spent blooms.
FERTILIZER: We ask a lot of roses … Be your best self and bloom all season long, so they appreciate a boost! For shrub roses the best time to fertilize is the spring. For hybrid teas and floribundas, they will appreciate some fertilizer in early spring and mid summer.
MULCH: 2-3″ of mulch helps retain moisture and provides a weed barrier. It is one of my fav parts in the process as it adds the finishing touch in the garden!
GOOD COMPANIONS: We all benefit from good companions. They truly help us be our best self and in the case of roses, many of those companions play host to the good bugs they need to fight the bad bugs lurking about!
YOU! Like in all good relationships, there is no substitute for time together. They like to show off for you and the more you visit the more you will recognize what is working and what is not! Maybe it is time to take a selfie of you and your roses and post it on social media. That will surely prove how much you love them. 🙂
GARDEN REPORT…
We have not had significant rain for 3 weeks and temps are soaring into the 90s. This is hard on all plants (and people).
As we’ve talked about before, I have a “system” (read about that here) that helps with a portion of my garden and those areas hardly know what the real weather conditions are, but for the rest of the garden, very little watering is happening due to the fact that the gardener (me) has been in a very busy season and has had very little time.
Proving once again that roses are not the divas many believe they are, here are pictures of my roses this week. Yes, many of these blooms are coming from areas that have not had the benefit of extra care!
Thanks for stopping by!
I hope this week is filled with all that you need to be your best self and that you have time to “stop and smell the roses.”
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
Teresa, you keep surprising me with new and beautiful roses from your garden. How special is Our Lady of Guadalupe! Such a lovely photo and one of those roses that looks to be looking up to the heavens and is bathed in light! I’m putting together a collection of photos where the roses are really capturing the light for a future series of paintings which I’d like to call ‘The Radiance of Roses’. But this month I’m working on my mini series ‘Aspects Of Roses’ – 30 small works. Roses never leave me short of inspiration!! If I don’t get to speak to you before hand, have a wonderful time in Syracuse, I know that you will!
Michelle, I will send you other pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is one you just might need to paint. She is a beauty and comes from Jackson and Perkins.
Thank you Teresa, that would be lovely! I have just been having fun looking at the Jackson and Perkins website and delighted to see that they are also responsible for the Pope John Paul II which I just loved painting!
That was the one that caught my eye.
It is a very sweet rose!
Love that Doris Day!
Same weather here in central VA! Thank angels, fall is soon upon us, and hopefully along with it some rain.
Sunny has blossoms as high as my nose, and spent flowers are remaining for hips. Sorry to see her go dormant, as she put up with Jbeetles during second flush, yet now Sunny makes up for lost time! xo
We were given the gift of a great rain last night that we desperately needed. Everything is a bit more perky today. Still in the 90s. Hot Hot Hot!
Still bone dry here. No rain for the past three weeks, high temps, and no rain in forecast for the coming week. ;-(
Guess I will put that sexy Flexzilla hose to work.
The rain was extra nice but no cooler temps! I think it may cool down toward the end of the week. Yep, Flexzilla will do the trick.
lovly flowers and good article on caring of roses. will keep them in mind.
Teresa, as always such an inspiring post and your roses are just lush and wonderful with all your TLC! Such sensible advice too. I think summer in all its forms starts to wear us down towards the end, whether it’s a lack of rain or, in the case of me, just too much! I hope all the gardeners out there who are desperately dry get some soon! Thank you again for your lovely posts.