Maintaining

With roses there's always something to do.  Above all else, they must be watered.  If you want more and bigger blooms, you must also fertilize.  If certain flower formations are what you're after, you must watch for them as they form and help them along.  Some of the techniques in this chapter may seem disconcerting, even unnecessary, at first, but the benefits will become obvious and soon enough overcome any reservations you may have at the start.

Promoting Growth

Once their winter dormant period is over and rosebushes are ready to grow, they literally have at it.  To realize their full potential, they must be helped along and properly coaxed toward the kinds of blooms you're after.

Unmounding

When leaflet sets begin appearing on exposed wood and the danger of frost is past, it's time to unmound.  Lots has been going on under the mounds that cover newly planted bushes, and mounding materials must be removed carefully to keep from damaging tender new growth.  Slow trickles from a water wand are perfect; clumps of mulch will fall from the canes, causing no damage..

If you can't use water, remove the mulch carefully with your fingers, not with your hands or a tool.  New Growth can be snapped off with a single false move.

Mulching

Unmounding gives you the starting materials for mulching--another maintenance step.  Mulching is simply layering organic material over the soil among the bushes.  In all of rose culture, nothing is more practical or more beneficial for rosebushes and the beds in which they grow.

Depending on where you've placed the bud union, you can pile mulch anywhere from two to four inches thick.  I use at least three inches of mulch because I plant the bud unions that high above soil level.  I can do this because I grow roses in a mild climate and don't worry about exposed bud unions being damaged in a hard winter freeze.

Mulching makes three important contributions to rose culture.  First, since the recommended watering procedure is flooding of rose beds, water flows over and through mulch each time you irrigate, slowly releasing nutrients that aren't available all at once.  They break down steadily during growing seasons, usually reducing their bulk by half each year.

Second, mulch conserves water and provides a blanket of protection from the hard rays of the summer sun.  Suggested irrigation schedules call for watering infrequently but deeply.  Mulch keeps water under the soil surface.

Finally, mulching controls weeds.  If mulch is thick enough, weeds can't easily grow through it.  If they do, they're not difficult to remove because the soil under the mulch is friable and their roots haven't anchored themselves.

Feeder roots that develop along larger roots benefit greatly from mulch.  They gobble up nutrients as soon as water leaches them from organic mulch materials.

Once you begin mulching, adding dry organic materials in the spring gets easier each year.  Mulch becomes more friable, loose, and amenable to additives.  It's easy to rake a circle around each bush, work in dry organic material, and cover the whole thing with fresh mulching materials for the coming season.

Manure is the single most important material, but remember that it must be aged to keep from burning the bud union and the delicate hairlike young feeder roots just beneath the soil surface.  Manure has nutritional value, though an even bigger plus is the heat it generates as it decomposes.  It warms the soil and boosts bacterial reactions that expedited mulch breakdown.

Another mulch material I've become sold on is alfalfa.  It's readily available, inexpensive, and easy to use.  Alfalfa comes either as meal or pelleted.  Both work, but make sure there are no additives.  I use two two-pound coffee cans full of it around each bush I either unmound (newly planted bushes) or remulch (existing bushes).  I spread alfalfa around the base of bushes and cover it with other mulch material.  The reason I cover it is that its khaki green color makes alfalfa look like foreign matter compared to other mulch materials, which are usually some shade of brown.  If you don't find it unsightly until it, too, turns brown, don't cover it and watch how quickly it breaks down.

As it disintegrates, alfalfa yields an alcohol called tricontenal to which roses take a particular shine.  When it reaches their roots, roses act as though they've been aching for a stiff drink.  Some claim it stimulates new basal breaks (growth from the bud union).  I wouldn't care to guarantee such results, but neither would I want to deprive my bushes of an annual alfalfa feed.

Additional mulch materials can be anything organic that breaks down into humus:  compost, aged bark, leaf mold, rice hulls, or peat moss.  Sawdust and wood shavings are good sources for mulch bulk, but they require nitrogen to complete their own breakdown.  If you have a good supply of shredded wood, just add extra nitrogen to help them break down so they won't usurp what's meant for bushes.

Lawn clippings and pine needles are also good, but they have a tendency to "mat" if they aren't mixed in well.  The surface of these mats causes water runoff and interferes with irrigation.

As I mentioned earlier, we use spent mushroom compost for mulch.  If we were closer to the wine country, we'd use pomace.  If I lived in the Midwest, I'd look for buckwheat hulls or ground corncobs.  In Louisiana, I'd go after bagasse.  All are perfectly wonderful sources of nutritional mulch, and one may be only marginally better than another--it's their availability that matters.  Look around your local area for sources of nutritious, inexpensive mulch. 

If you persist in not mulching, you must do something each spring to loosen soil before you apply dry fertilizers around the base of the bushes.  Soil with no blanket of mulch becomes hard and compacted, and fertilizers can't be scratched in.  Compressed soil also inhibits the development of feeder roots.

Raising beds

Anyone who has had drainage problems or who grows plants for which drainage can never be too perfect knows the advantage of raised beds.  When the time comes for you to think about constructing your own, you might consider a shortcut I have discovered.

At Garden Valley Ranch we plant and mound bushes directly into the ground, with nothing around them.  After unmounding, we begin adding mulch to a height that requires something to hold it in.  Using inexpensive two-by-six-inch redwood cut from fallen trees, we lay lengths on edge and frame beds.  Most of our beds are one hundred feet long and six feet wide, with bushes planted in pairs three feet apart.  The redwood lengths are supported every five feet with a stake, and the ends are toenailed together.  When the frame is completed, there is a five-inch (one inch of wood is underground, in a narrow trench) border around the entire bed, which can be filled with mulch material that won't drain away with waterings.  I like to use four inches of mulch, for the nutrients it provides and to reduce weeds that would otherwise establish themselves.

Watering

You already know that roses require lots of water.  What you might not know is that roses like being watered a certain way and only just so often.

Except on mornings of guaranteed warm days when you want torrid bushes of dust or spray residues, never water roses from overhead.  Wet foliage invites disease.

It's more important to water deeply than to water often.  Feeder roots will develop no matter how you water; it's the long roots you need to train.  Encourage deep roots by forcing them down in their search for water.

The best watering method, flooding, is easy if you have raised beds.  When beds are flooded, the water spreads nutrients throughout the mulch, benefiting feeder roots.  With proper drainage, water reaches levels well below the soil surface, thus encouraging taproots to find it.

Water wands are good to use since they break up the flow of water passing through them.  Hard spurts from an open hose will disturb mulch material and expose fragile roots.

I can't tell you how often to water because of local differences.  Generalities don't apply if days have been warm or if wind robs bushes of water.

When I tell people that we water only every eight to ten days, they seem incredulous.  We use raised beds and plant bushes high, since we add four inches of mulch.  When we water, we flood.  The carpet of mulch insures that bushes have plenty of moisture for more than a week between wateriness.  If a hot spell comes along or if bushes show signs of drying out, we water.

Fertilizing

Besides being big drinkers, roses like to eat a lot. They'll reward you with increased bloom for the meals you give them.

In addition to putting dry fertilizers into the almighty hole when new bushes are planted, I use dry fertilizers once per year.  For the established bushes, dry fertilizers are applied in a trench raked around the drip line, that circular area of soil directly beneath the outer reaches of the tips of a pruned bush.  Dry fertilizers should be applied as early in spring as sets of leaves appear.  The ones I use yearly are discussed in Chapter 3.

Rake soil back over the trench after putting fertilizers in it.  Water well and plan to use liquid fertilizers for the rest of the growing season.

Liquid fertilizers such as Start, Grow, and Bloom are named for what they get bushes to do.  Nitrogen is most important at the start of each season to get bushes off and going.  Potash is needed at the end of the year when everything already on the bush should be encouraged to mature fully and new growth shouldn't appear.  Potassium is always important and is part of most formulations.  Element analyses are listed on the containers of all fertilizers.

Brand names aren't important.  Take advantage of sales and stock up on fertilizers if you find a good one; they keep.  Follow the application rate suggested by the manufacturer.  Apply liquid fertilizers along drip lines and water in well.

Some rosarians time their applications of fertilizer to coincide with what a bush has just done or is about to do.  After a flush of bloom is over, for example, fertilizer is applied to get the next crop going.  I believe such pat-on-the-back practices make blooms appear all at once rather than at an even pace.  What bushes are doing at any particular time is irrelevant to good fertilizing.  Roses should be fed at least twice a month while they're growing and blooming.

You can buy fertilizers that are rich in trace elements such as iron, zinc, copper, manganese, magnesium, calcium, sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.  Trace elements speed growth by interacting with nutrients that have been in the soil all along but have remained inert.  My experience is that trace elements do no harm.  If bushes don't need them, they remain unobtrusively in the soil until called.

When people ask me what to feed their one or two rosebushes, I always tell them to use fish emulsion; it has a primary ingredient analysis of 5-0-0, rendering it incapable of damaging your plants from overdose.  Every nursery I've ever seen has it, and it's inexpensive.  Try different fertilizers on your roses; they'll love the variety.  If you find that particular fertilizers work well, stick with them.