Feeding and Mulching Roses

Now before you off to feed your roses, it is a good idea to check around and clean up debris that was left over from pruning. I like to feed my roses a granular food three times each year. First time in early spring when the growth starts and again around flowering time then once more just after mid summer. The important thing when choosing a food for roses are these three numbers on the bottom of the bag. The first one indicates the ratio of nitrogen. The second two are phosphorus and potassium. You want to make sure that there is a greater balance of phosphorus and potassium in the plant food than nitrogen. Roses do use a lot of nitrogen, but too much nitrogen in a rose food is going to make a lot of leafy growth and more flowering. You want to follow the instructions in terms of dose for the plant food. The food I am using for a large rose bush, like the one we are looking at. I am going to use about a half a cup, which is two good handfuls for me. And I am spreading it around the base of the plant, cleaning it off the bottom branches. I am also going to add the rose gardener secret ingredient. Every year in the early spring, I like to put a dose of Epsom salt on my roses. Epsom salt is usually not sold in nurseries or gardening stores but you can find it in your local drug store in the laxative section. Metamucil is not going to do much for your roses but Epsom salts, these are actually magnesium sulfate, and magnesium encourages what we call basal breaks in roses. Those are vigorous young growths from the very bottom of the rose plant. That is always what you want to see in a happy rose garden, a fresh new growth like that from the base of the plant in spring. I will use two handfuls or about a half a cup worth for a large bush like this one and again, I sprinkle it around a few inches outside the base of the plant. And you can work that in to the top layer of soil again if you like to. I recommend a composted malt, whether it be composted manure, bark mixture, composted bark, package garden compost or your own home garden compost. And I would like to put about a two inch layer of compost around the base of each rose plant, spreading it around relatively evenly on top of the food that we have just put in. This compost is going to do two things. First of all, it is going to help conserve moisture during our droughty summer and it is also going to become incorporated through the action of earthworms and other soil organisms into the top layer of the soil, where it will improve the soil texture and add nutrition.



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