Flower Gardens

» Cottage_Garden - Growing Roses

I just started a series of articles on how to buy a "good" healthy rose. Getting a good start is important. I'll write more about roses in future articles.

Roses need lots of sun, good drainage (ie not a damp soggy wet spot) and good air circulation. Those are the main requirements -- and start with a healthy good quality specimen of a variety suited to your area and your garden maintenance routine. Also look for varieties that are specially noted for their disease resistance.

Certain varieties tend to do better in certain climates, for instance what grows well in Texas or Atlanta with extremely hot and humid summers may not do well in Chicago where summers are hot and humid but short and winter is brutal or Boston where summers are cool and winters are brutal, or Seattle where summers are cool and winters are mild, or southern California where it never gets very cold and the growing season is year round, or Phoenix which is sunny about 800 days a year and desert dry. A few such as Knock Out seem to do well just about everywhere.

Hybrid tea roses are the fussy ones of the bunch but recent breeding seems to be heading toward finding disease and pest resistant varieties even among those. Since these tend to have the most spectacular flowers, I sure wish they would hurry up! (It's not like a rose breeder can snap their fingers and get a new one -- the process is incredibly painstaking, long and full of failure.)

Hybrid tea roses often have winter hardiness issues. If you garden in zone 6 or colder, check the winter hardiness of any rose before you purchase it.

If you are in a colder winter area such as zone 6 or colder, plant roses grown on their own roots rather than grafted. If you plant a grafted rose, you will have to take special measures to protect the graft from the winter cold.

Try a "low maintenance" landscape or shrub rose such as Knock Out or Bonica for easier care and lots of blooms. Here is a photo of Bonica blooms.

Rugosa roses are very easy to grow, they are very cold tolerant and actually hate to be sprayed.

The Buck roses are also very cold tolerant, sturdy plants.

I am sure there are as many opinions about roses as there are rose growers. There are casual rose growers who have one or two in their yard, and serious rosarians who grow roses to show or who have hundreds and hundreds of roses in their garden. I would love to hear from anyone growing roses at whatever level -- roses are beautiful!

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - Growing Roses

In response to Growing Roses posted by Cottage_Garden:

Have you heard of roses liking tea? My gardening buddy told me to pour cool left-overs from the pot and/or save old tea bags and open them up at the base of the roses. I tried it and WHOOOOOAH! did I see an improvement.

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - Coffee Tea and Banana Diet

In response to Growing Roses posted by Joni188:

Tea? Wow. Ordinary tea. Hmmm. Either it made you water more often or ... maybe some micronutrient. I'll have to see what I can dig up on that. Kewl!

Coffee grounds can supply nitrogen ...

Have you tried the bananas or banana peels yet? Bury one at the base of each rose bush. Potassium.

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Cottage_Garden - Tea! for Roses

I came across the web site for the little PlanTea bags. But that's special tea bags for plants, lots of different stuff in it. Organic fertilizer. Cute name. I have never tried it so can't tell you anything more than the web site says.

PlanTea.

Am finding lots of compost tea and wormcasting tea and so on but nothing on plain old ordinary tea yet.

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - Tea! for Roses

In response to Tea! for Roses posted by Cottage_Garden:

I'll definately try the banana and start saving my coffee grinds for the garden too. I must admit to being a lazy composter of kitchen waste. I am learning fast that it can be a gardeners best friend.

This may be a new discussion...but do you know of any natural ways of detering or killing aphids or weeds? I know you can use boiling water and flames to burn weeds but I am also wondering about other kitchen tricks. Because of my big fish pond, I do not use any pesticides or weed control chemicals.

Joni

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - aphids and weeds kitchen tips

In response to Tea! for Roses posted by Joni188:

Aphids you can try smushing with your fingers or you can knock them off with a spray of water from the garden hose. Or just wait for the ladybugs to show up.

Some people will use a soap solution on aphids. The old standby was Ivory soap, they even had their own magazine ads about it many, many, years ago. Nowadays the so-called soaps are often detergents and not really soap, so you have to be very careful. Test your solution on a leaf and wait a few days before spraying the whole plant -- you don't want to have a bad reaction and defoliate or even kill your plant!!! The same goes if you are using the commercially formulated soaps such as Safer's. This is going to be a contact control, so you need to hit the aphids directly with the soap spray. You shouldn't need to use much at all if you are very careful or targeted with your spraying.

Flaming and boiling water will kill off the weed tops but not the roots, so it is not going to be that effective against perennial weeds. Old fashioned hoe and pulling them out by the roots are pretty eco-friendly controls, so is smothering with newspaper and mulch. But that's not kitchen stuff.

Vinegar! A stronger concentration of vinegar can be used on weeds, that might be easier/safer than walking (or running if it's a distance) to pour boiling water on them. It is not the same vinegar as you buy at the grocery store, the edible vinegar you have in the kitchen is more diluted. Kitchen vinegar might do in some baby annual seedlings, but those are so easy to whisk away with a hoe it hardly seems worth the effort.

The flamer scares me, I am sure I would hurt myself!

Boron will kill stuff, it is in the borax product for laundry. BUT it is SUPER toxic and sits in the soil for years and years. I would NEVER use this to kill weeds. Once it is in the soil, NOTHING will grow there.

Salt can kill some weeds, but it can also become a problem in the soil. It used to be suggested for weeding the asparagus because asparagus is more salt tolerant than some weeds. But I don't think I would recommend it. Better to mulch heavily between the asparagus.

One last kitchen trick for weeds is the paring knife, it can dig out weeds in between pavers on the patio. Some people find it relaxing to sit out after supper with a glass of lemonade (or whatever) and run the paring knife along the stones. Personally, that kind of job would drive me insane. LOL

I know there are many homemade garden "remedies" out there -- I love to hear when they actually work out.

I am starting some other discussion threads with topics like this. LOL

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - aphids and weeds kitchen tips

In response to aphids and weeds kitchen tips posted by Cottage_Garden:

Thanks Barb! This is so interesting. I love the idea of using common household products and will try some and let you know how they work. I have enough weeds that I could try a few different things and see what works best. I'll let you know when I have time and sun to try it.

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - aphids and weeds kitchen tips

In response to aphids and weeds kitchen tips posted by Joni188:

WOW! I hope you don't have all the problems I found solutions for .... weeds, bugs, diseasles. Anyway, I found several kitchen recipes including using milk and baking soda for starters. (There is a recipe specifically for roses using baking soda, BTW.) I started new threads so they would be easier to find again later.

Check for the discussions at the Flower Gardens Discussions List.

ps Everybody feel free to join in!

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» tazzie068 - HELP Please!

I have 2 red rose shrubs and about 2 months ago they got a bug. I was able to take care of them and make them healthy again, but I had to go on a emergency trip & left my roses in care of my fiance's sister-in-law for a month. Now, my poor babies are dead! I have some green in the main stem part, but the rest is all dead and brown. How can I bring my babies back to life? They are very special to me and it would break my heart to have them die on me. PLEASE, if someone can help me, it would be HIGHLY appreciated.
Thank You, Dawn Mallam

-- posted by tazzie068