Three Needless Fears

I shied away from three aspects of good maintenance when I started growing roses.  If I can spare you the needless fears I suffered, you and your roses will be happier for it.

Installing an irrigation system.  

When I grew only a few roses, I insisted that I liked the time I spent hand-watering my garden. It was true.  What I didn't realize was that if I had installed an automatic irrigation system, I could have spent that same time inspecting and admiring everything while bushes were being watered, without having to stand around holding a hose.  Irrigation systems are a godsend.  They're efficient, a snap to install, and inexpensive.

Water can be emitted to suit how wet you want areas around bushes.  Drip systems can be used without so much as dampening soil surfaces.  I'm not in favor of drip irrigation not because I don't believe it works, but rather because it releases water at pinpoints and thus can't take advantage of mulch.  If mulch doesn't get thoroughly soaked, nutritional values aren't released.  I use a water emitter that produces a micro-jet spray of water in a full five-foot circle, and I space my emitters so that rose beds get completely drenched.

After you find that you can water automatically, you have yet another pleasant surprise when you learn that you can fertilize at the same time.  Fertilizer dispensers can work in conjunction with watering.  Put full strength into dispensers, liquid fertilizers are automatically diluted for desired release strengths.

Irrigation specialists are listed in the yellow pages.  Materials are readily available, cheap, and easy to put together with special adhesives that are brushed onto plastic pipes.  Shapes are available for all garden contours.

Analyzing soil.

At first, soil analyses seemed unworkable to me.  I was convinced that while knowing soil's pH might be interesting, soil analyses were really superfluous because I knew I was starting with good soil and adding proven nutrients.  Later on I had another reason for skipping a soil analysis:  my soil had become so complex because of the many additives I gave it that there would be no one spot where, I could get a truly representative sample.

Once I gave in and decided to investigate pH, this latter excuse caved in.  Soil analysis experts tell you exactly how to get multiple soil samples, the total of which will provide a true sample of what you're growing in.

Tell analyzers what you grow, take their instructions for getting samples, and follow their advice to the letter.  You'll be amazed at how easy it is to add what you lack, and how inexpensively you can correct for improer soil pH.  The final rewards are blooms you never imagined you could produce.

This is the time to consider trace elements.  You may learn that something missing entirely is easy to add.  When you do supply the missing element, the results can be staggering as nutrients that have been present all along but lying dormant are released.

Composting.  

I always thought composting was messy.  It was something for those who were a little too far gone on organic gardening.  I didn't change my mind until I began to feel guilty about filling large trash cans with perfectly healthy foliage, a wonderful source of nutrients that I had cut off bushes or blooms.  I read up on composting and learned that I was tossing out other valuable nutrients when I disposed of kitchen scraps such as eggshells, vegetable peelings, melon rinds, even coffee grounds.

Small gardens don't have space for a compost pile, but self-contained composting containers are available and work well.  If you have enough space, composting works perfectly right on top of the soil, and the pile can be kept neat and odorless.

Now we keep a compost pile that resembles something you'd expect to see in Chicen Itza--broad at the base and narrowing toward the top.  Everything taken from the roses is used unless it's diseased.  Even prunings are shredded along with foliage and stems and added to kitchen scraps.  Breakdown is accelerated by layering shredded material with fresh chicken manure.  When we remulch rose beds each year, we use composted salvage from the previous season.

Once when I was ordered to bed with the flu, I read about good things to add to a compost pile.  Incredibly rich sources are all around us.  For instance, feathers have a chemical analysis of 15.30-0-0, and waste from a felt hat factory boasts 13.80-0-.98.

I can't tell you how to compost on anything but a large scale.  To learn how you can do it in the space you have available, read Let it Rot by Stu Campbell.

Unfortunately, no amount of good maintenance will control insects and fungus diseases.  For those, you must learn about spraying.