Roses: tucking our roses in for winter

just a note on keeping our babies good and healthy for over winter or the colder season...I suggest that now for lower zoned areas is a good time to do this......by applying a handful of Sulphate of Potash(0-0-50), at the base of established roses, then covering with a mulch of your choice, our roses will have a good start for next year. Potassium is the one element that regulates the water content of the plants. It lowers frost-tenderness and hardens the wood, thus counterbalancing the bloating tendency of nitrogen. Don't use any pure salts of potassium but a potassium-magnesium fertilizer, which is commercially available as potash. You can even do this in July-August(this will increase the frost-hardiness before winter) uphere in zone 8a-b, I apply mine in Oct-Nov! Prior to this application of potash, it is a good idea to clean the base of the roses of all residue....eg. foliage and buds that may have dropped******* wood ashes, not coal ashes**** can be be applied as an alternative! happy gardening! Elaine

Elaine great advice!!! It's obviously a tried and trusted forumla for success!!

Elaine, you read my mind. I have been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks. Bless you. I hadn't heard the advice before to fertilize with potassium in the fall. Great advice. But for those of us who already struggle with alkaline soil, using plain wood ashes might not be the best idea without adding extra acidifying agents to the soil.

thaat's true, lupine!!!! the dosage in this case is ever so important! E.

I conducted a workshop on wintering our roses!!! About 25-30 people showed up and the interest was incredible....more and more gardeners are turning to the Old roses and the David Austins...what I like most to concentrate on is the area we live in and just how we grow and maintain these plants for these conditions..I think today, there are many out there that haven't been told this...anyhow, it was great fun............the biggest fat cookies, coffee and some hot mulled cranberry to warm the cockles of yoour toes!!! Elaine(aka..Ramblin' Rose)

Hey Elaine, isn't it still slightly early for you to winterize? I got notice from our Park of Roses for all available people to come do that on 11/16. And, FYI, probably I will. I do love that park. And I love working with the roses. There are always a few people who come to help, mostly so that they can learn from the real professionals just what to do for their own roses. I would love some mulled cranberry cider. We will get coffee and donuts for our reward.

Interesting; the David Austins growing at the Park aren't winter-protected. They receive almost no pruning either, just cut off the dead stuff in the spring. The park did experiment with growing a few varieties with the same treatment as Hybrid Teas, but the David Austins tested seemed to do better being pruned as if they were OGRs.

nope.......not really too early to winterize..I have found cutting out the dead, diseased and damaged bits is a huge forward for me in that I have so many shrubs. Cleaning the soil or the deck as we call it, is a great help also! I just did a pruning clinic, etc and couldn't stress enough on doing this..pruning back by a third, now is a good thing too! Up here, Kathy, we, in the very middle of Nov., seem to get these strange cold winds, causing a drying out of the plants..(dessication). So the stripping off of the old leaves and then mulching somehow for the cold season, is the way to go...this November, rather than pruning out the perennials, etc..I am going to let them act as a mulch for the entire garden! then, I don't have to mulch..too much going on right now!!! only the containerized roses do I move to a protected area ...in your zone, you say, they don't winterize the Austins! obviously, they may be of the tougher variety! and a number of yrs old! On own roots, my Austins and the others come thru pretty much intact!!!E.

It must be the difference in latitude. My roses are still budding and blooming and growing. If I prune while they are still in active growth (we have only had one light frost so far) it just makes them grow faster than ever! The wind here is cold, too, but the air is still very humid, and we usually have a fair amount of rain in the autumn. I wait until my rugosas lose their leaves, mid to late November, then I know the other roses are at least starting to go dormant. And I have learned the hard way that mulching mine when they are in full growth just leads to more disease problems. So I have to go out in the cold, cold weather to do mine (brrr). Some years I do have to cut off the foliage to force them into dormancy in early January (some years winter arrives very late) but I prefer to let them do it on their own timetable.

Interesting idea about allowing the perennials to form your mulch this winter. Let us know in the spring how it worked out. I usually use hardwood or cypress mulch mounded about 12" high; this year I plan to use home-grown sticks of hardwood for mulch, with about 6" of ground leaves to provide the extra insulation on my tender roses (HT and Pat Austin only).

Elaine, I am still amazed at how wrong I was in my assumption of what your part of the world is. I had just heard about it, and pictured it to be something like San Francisco's climate.

Thank you for letting us know better :)

I wanted a separate entry for this part: Saturday I went to our local Park of Roses to help with the fall pruning. They have 25,000 rose bushes, and about 80% of them must be pruned to allow for winter mulching.

There were about 20 of us who showed up to help; I spent 2 1/2 hours working and gave up. I also pulled my back out pretty bad, so I got to spend the rest of Saturday, most of Sunday, and probably a lot of today, Monday, in bed. What we do for roses!

I still need (want) to wait to do my own roses: most of them are in full bloom. A huge number of the roses I cut down on Saturday were also in bud and bloom. It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to bravely hack off 7' stems of 20 roses and throw them in huge compost piles! Such a waste of beautiful roses. But nobody had the time or energy to make bouquets. I did rescue a couple sprays of Red Fairy that were mistakenly pruned, and they made a beautiful bouquet.

I've had pretty good success using "wilt-pruf" to minimize moisture loss with mine.