READ THE LABELS! There are all kinds of hybridized roses, from huge ramblers to mini shrubs, so it pays to read before you buy.

A naturally large and rambunctious rose may not do well if it’s constantly pruned down to fit in a small space. A rose that needs full sun will not thrive in shade.

Make a plan & place your rose in a spot where it can be itself and its needs can be adequately met. You’ll both be happier that way.

Don’t forget, you still need to improve the soil. For each rose, dig a hole up to two feet around and as deep as the pot your rose came in.

Mix in a bag of horse manure. Bagged chicken manure is a bit too strong for a new bush.

If you have heavy clay soil, you may want loosen the ground a foot deeper and blend in some ground bark/planting soil mix to achieve the right depth.

The best solution is to design your rose garden in native loamy soil if you can. It’s a mix of the three main types of soil: sand, silt, and clay. As a general rule, loam soil should consist of equal parts of all three soil types.

But if you need to amend your soil with one of these ingredients, the bush will love its new underground environment.

Pruning can reshape the entire plant and encourage healthy new growth. It only needs to be done once a year, usually in early spring. Pick a sunny day in February & plan to get dirty kneeling down to make cuts on the canes at about 16 inches above the soil.

With smaller cane pruning, I use a pruner in each hand – 1 to cut, 1 to hold.

More details about pruning is here.

Roses need water. In summer weather, you’ll get more flowers out of them by watering them at least once a week. You can use a hose with a timer or drip irrigation with a timer – but a watering can – not so much. I like a watering ball & a hose. It’s personal . . .

Try not to get the leaves wet. This can encourage certain diseases that can cause your plant to drop its leaves. If that happens, your rose will spend energy replacing leaves instead of flowering, but it’s not usually fatal.

To get the best blooms from your roses, apply fertilizer after the last spring frost and again after the first bloom (Rosarians like to use an organic plant food formulated primarily for roses).

You can repeat once a month until late September. But if you fertilize too late in the season, the plant may keep growing and trying to bloom when it should be starting its hip production & going dormant for the winter.

More about fertilizers is here.

Here’s 2 great fertilizer tips:

1) Add foliar fertilizing to your summer schedule. That’s just spraying the leaves of your bushes with a liquid fertilizer. The leaves will soak it up & the nutrients go quickly to the blooms. (Rose exhibitors often do this 2 weeks before a show.)

2) Try fish fertilizer as an alternative to the bagged ones. If you have rocky soil, it’s a way around all that spade & rake work. Yes, it stinks – sorry, but that’s the smell of biological action. Your roses may love the vitamin boost.

More about fish fertilizer is here.

Removing faded flowers encourages new blooms and maintains a clean look. It’s also a great time to look for crossed or damaged canes. I often do it while I’m watering bushes with my hose ball.

Because most roses repeatedly bloom from spring until late fall, keeping up with weekly deadheading can be a chore for some folks.

One way to get this done is by twisting off old flowers with your gloved hand each time you walk by.

For me, though, I find it relaxing each week & a great way to evaluate each bush . . .

More details about deadheading is here.

Of the insects that feed on roses, most do little enough damage that it’s not worth treating for them because you’ll often harm the pollinators too.

Most roses attract butterflies, bees, and other beneficial wildlife.

If the damage gets out of control, try using less toxic organic pest control options such as insecticidal soap to take care of the problem.

If you see a rose with unusual “witches broom” growth on top, it could be a symptom of RRD, one of the most serious rose illnesses.

If one of your roses has RRD, remove it quickly & put it in the trash – rather than your compost bin or with other yard waste for pick up so there is less chance of spreading the mites.

Check roserosette.org to see if it has become widespread in your area. You can upload photos of your rose onto their database to get an expert opinion. You can also call your local extension office or Rose Society.

More details are here.

I tend a lot of community gardens with a whole lot of roses so a tall fence is the best option for us. But if you only have a few roses to protect and a smaller deer population, odor-based repellents can persuade these destructive critters to go elsewhere for a snack.

You might think that deer wouldn’t like a mouthful of thorns, but even still, young rose stems, leaves, and blooms are among their favorite treats.

Strong cold winds in the fall can whip a rose bush to the point where it will twist, split, or snap off altogether. In high winds, sometimes the unpruned bush will even tilt over enough to expose the rootball.

Just prune to 4 ft once around Halloween & let the rose hips develop after that rather than new buds.

Also, frost will build up on the top flower mass at night when the temperatures drop. Reducing this top foliage & lowering the overall height of a bush will reduce all these risks.