English Garden Rose Care
Dear Friend,
An English garden rose is a most beautiful flower to behold. Much like many of the varieties of roses you may have seen around the world, the rose family sports some spectacular specimens.
There is nothing so rewarding as growing a garden full of roses. The rose as you know, has been around for centuries. It endures and grows more elegant with time. The proper care, feeding and maintenance of the plant is essential to the lifeline of your bushes.
The varieties of rose bushes is startling to the imagination. You could have a special rose for every occasion. Your selection could be based solely around color. Red invokes memories of love. Pink reminds of special dates or perhaps a formal event you once attended. White of course would be for weddings or the birth of a child. The list could go on endlessly. Suffice it to say that color, shape, and any other preference you have could be filled completely by roses.
Most rose bushes follow similar care and feeding instructions. These are merely an overview of some of them. For instance, most rose bushes need at least six (6) hours of raw direct sunlight each and every day. They enjoy the sun, and are hearty enough to endure the strong sunshine.
Some roses do better in the shade. so make sure you check the manufacturers growing instructions. They are normally listed on the outside of the package. If you do not find them there, take a look online by visiting your favorite search engine like Bing.com or Google. Key in “abc (variety) or rose picture”. This will first return results for the type of flower you have. Next, you’d just dig a little deeper and key in that variety of rose + planting instructions, or some similar phrase. This latter search will generate results for how to plant, feed, type of soil needed, to compost or not, type of information.
Roses are no different than any other plant in your garden. They attract pests and insects. These creatures can damage and even kill your rose bushes, so you need to be watchful of the tracks they may leave on your plants. Some of the more persistent pests are: aphids, rose slugs, mites, rose chafers just to name a few. Others include rose cane and rose midge larva insects.
Most gardeners know that pests come with the garden. But you don’t have to put up with them. You could take a few steps to end their raid on your plants. First, you could just kill them with your hands if you see them as you work in your garden. Seeing can become difficult because they are quite small. But knowing what to look for, that is the tell-tale tracks they leave behind is a big tip off.
For instance, if you notice a part of the rose peddle being half eaten away, that is a track that some insect has visited your plants. What you would do is cut off (prune) the leaf back beyond the point at which the plant is eaten away. If you do this, hopefully it will dissolve any eggs the insect has left behind to further infiltrate your lovely roses. Secondly, some of you may opt for the synthetic or natural pesticides. This is totally up to you. Some feel that its wrong to use them unless they are natural. But you need to make sure that whatever method you choose is compatible with the roses and the other plants you have in your garden. If not, the consequence may mean starting your entire garden over again.
