How to take care of your Roses

Roses are difficult to take care of, many say. However, there are some ways where you can take care of your roses to keep them in the brightest and most beautiful shape. This is how to keep your roses growing  in a healthy way:

The day you plant the roses, refresh the roots in a bucket of water while you dig the planting hole. An hour-long soaking plumps up shriveled roots.

After that, you should Clip off damaged roots. Shorten roots that are too long to fit in the planting hole without bending.

Some rose sellers trim the stems, or canes, for you. More likely, you’ll need to prune them yourself. Remove the broken ends of canes, canes with blackened or diseased spots, and twiggy growth.

Leave three to five sturdy canes in an open-centered arrangement. Cut back any extra-long canes so all are about the same length. Don’t worry about making a pruning mistake; it’s hard to go wrong.

Timing is crucial for bare-root planting: in most areas bare-root roses should be planted in early spring before their leaves unfurl; where temperatures rarely dip below 20 degrees, winter planting is best.

If you can’t plant a bare-root rose right away, keep its roots moist and cool. An alternative to bare-root roses — container-grown or “potted” roses — can be planted any time they’re available. Potted roses are a convenient way to extend the planting season.

Fertilizing roses

Use an all-purpose garden fertilizer, because it has balanced amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Fertilizers touted especially for roses, such as Rose Food, are fine but not mandatory. In spring, as the plant emerges from dormancy, you can water with a tablespoon of Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) dissolved in a gallon of water to promote strong canes.

Always water before applying fertilizer so the plant is plumped up and under no stress.

Diligently water your roses. Soak the entire root zone at least twice a week in dry summer weather.  Roses love water, but don’t drown them. That is, they don’t like to sit in water, and they’ll die if the soil is too wet in winter. Also, use mulch.

Using sharp clippers, you can spruce up your rosebushes whenever something unattractive about the plant catches your critical eye.

• Here’s stuff you can cut out any time you see it:

  • Dead wood: Remove dead canes down to the ground level.

  • Damaged wood: Cut it back into about 1 inch of healthy wood.

  • Misplaced stems: Take off stems that are rubbing together (choose one and spare the other), stems that are taking off in the wrong direction, and stems that are trailing on the ground.

  • Suckers: In a grafted plant, these errant canes emerge from below the graft union (the bulge at the base of the bush). The suckers look different from the rest of the bush — they’re often smoother, straighter, and lighter in color. Another clue: They sprout leaves and occasionally mongrel flowers that look nothing like the main bush.

 The plant looks better when you get rid of spent flowers. Also, because the goal of all flowering plants is to stop flowering and produce seed (in the case of rosebushes, to make rose hips), deadheading thwarts the process. So the plant is fooled into making more flowers. Deadhead away!

 Early spring is the best time to prune. If it’s still winter, your overeager cuts may lead to frost damage. Pruning is pretty straightforward: Remove all non-negotiable growth, thin the plants, and then shape them.

Experts advise cutting 1/4 inch above a bud eye so the bud eye doesn’t dry out.