Mistakes we’ve all had to learn the hard way

I’ve been there too – trying to be our rose’s best parent, but sometimes . . . well, we just fall into a rut. Especially during these crazy and depressing Covid-19 years. If you are like me, you often learn the hard way that you’ve brought outdated habits to your new garden adventure.

Most farmers welcome overhead rain, but not rose crop farmers in Arizona . . .

Few gardening mistakes are unfixable, so let’s dig in . .

Here are the 7 classic errors that new rose gardeners inadvertently make, and a simple step you can take to get back on the path to more blooms as you continue to learn about America’s Flower.

1. Overhead Watering

Most garden plants are perfectly happy to get overhead water. That’s how the sky does it, obviously. Most lawn sprinklers and basic watering cans deliver water this way.

But roses are one of a group of special perennials. Several kinds of fungus just love to infect rose leaves, and most of them require a wet leaf to grow. If you sprinkle the leaves of the roses with water, you are just asking for more disease on your bushes.

So water gently at the base of the plant instead, letting the water go down to the roots. The good news is that roses have fairly deep roots, so if you water them deeply enough, they will be good for several days afterwards. Adding 2 inches of mulch will also help the bush retain any water it gets as well.

I discovered a hose attachment called a watering bubbler that allows me to hand water small gardens, but right at the roots if needed. The hotter the climate, the more this is a good idea.

A drip tube system with a hose timer can also make watering more automated.

2. Overcrowding the bushes

Most gardeners understand that roses need 6 hours of full sun and good airflow. But if you plant them right within 1 foot of each other, or too close to trees or a fence, your roses are much more likely to struggle with diseases like black spot. This means your leaves will look less attractive, and your roses will lose the valuable nutrients taken in through leaves.

If you spread the bushes out to 2 1/2 feet, they will still get more air movement through them as they grow. Move your roses to a nice sunny, open spot where they have room to breathe. You can also help fight any of those foliar diseases with some of the new liquid fertilizers or granular controls that fight off fungus while they add nutrients. More details about rose fertilizers are in another post.

3. Killing too many bugs

When we spend so much time nurturing our roses only to see them ravaged by aphids, mites, or Japanese beetles, we might run to the big box store and get the nastiest non-selective spray we can find. And then we get trigger-happy with our new insecticide spray until every little crawler has been killed off.

But the price of our frustration is often the loss of the beneficial bugs that we want to have around, like the ladybugs and praying mantises that eat pests – or the bees and butterflies that pollinate your flowers. Aphids are everywhere, so beetles that eat them are great allies in that unseen battle.

The easy answer is for all of us to hand-pick pests or water spray them as much as we can, and encourage predatory bugs to take up residence in our garden to help you out with pest-patrol duty.

If you still have serious pest infestations, try using more selective formulas based on Neem oil that smother these little enemies without poisoning your own large and beneficial soldiers.

4. Too much fertilizing

One of the outdated misconceptions that I started with was that more fertilizer yielded more blooms. It took a bit of reading and talking to other rose gardeners about that, but I learned that roses only need a modest amount of fertilizer.

And the more organic the fertilizer the better. Synthetic fertilizers can kill natural soil bacteria and/or lead to salt burn in the top 6 inches of soil, both of which can harm your plant.

A lot of the time a new rose gardener will see yellow leaves and think about feeding the bush more fertilizer. But then the plant looks even worse after adding some – so the gardener adds even more fertilizer. Do this 3 times, and the plant is almost dead. Most nutrition problems can be handled in other ways – like double watering or loosening the soil for more water and nutrient absorption.

Planting your roses in organically rich soil with plenty of compost and slow-release fertilizer, should give them all the nutrients they need. If a bush looks poorly, first check to see if it has a pest or disease problem before thinking it’s a fertilizer one. Again, many problems are just related to water absorption.

More about rose fertilizers are in another post. Or more about fish fertilizers here.

5. Spreading disease yourself

Diseases in the rose leaf usually will start the bush’s decline in health  When you prune your roses, the diseased leaves that fall to the base of the plant can keep re-introducing foliar disease. Many composted leaves can harbor disease. The problem with 1 bush can spread to others if you use a dull, dirty pruner that tends to crush canes and spread disease.

The quick answer here is about rose bed cleanliness.  When you prune your roses, be sure to rake up and dispose of any leaves that look diseased as trash, not compost.  To be extra careful, when I mulch, I try to keep the area at the base each rose clear of leaves in case there is unseen disease that ends up under the mulch.

I also make sure that I’m using a good, sharp pair of pruners and that I wipe down the blades with 50/50 bleach/water between plants to prevent the spread of disease. If you drop your hand pruners onto the soil, clean them off before using them again. Garden soil is saturated with active bacteria.

And, by the way, avoid anvil blade pruners at all costs – they often crush the rose stems. More about pruning roses is in another post. And pruning climbers too.

6. Bad pruning habits

Most of us have been afraid to prune our new roses when we first planted them. But skipping this step can lead to odd-shaped and spindly roses with diseases of the leaf (foliar diseases.) I used to take the opposite path and cut them back too far down. But there is a happy medium.

The average middle ground in this debate is to reduce cane height by 1/3 or 1/2 at the most like in the graphic above.  In warmer climates, I cut back canes by about one-third, but in colder areas I have to prune by 1/2 to be sure of avoiding stem freeze in the smaller canes.

When pruning, first be sure to remove any dead or diseased wood, then prune to keep the center of the plant open for air flow, and finally to remove all thin canes that steal nutrients from the larger, more productive ones.

Also look out for any canes of any size growing from below the graft joint and cut them off as well. These are from the root stock and they will also draw energy from the visible canes of your bush above ground.

Can you prune too much? You’ll find out more about that question here.

See this general post about pruning roses or details about pruning climbers.

And then I tackle the fine art of summer deadheading here . .

7. Skipping your weekly deadheading

As a kid, the first time I saw my Mom’s roses bloom, I enjoyed them for a week or so, then I saw that they weren’t blooming anymore. That’s when I was taught the fine art of weekly deadheading. It started as a chore, then became a meditation of sorts.

A rose’s purpose is to get pollinated by blooming. Thank you, bees. If it achieves that goal, it will put all its energy into setting rose hips filled with seeds to make little rose babies and it will have no need to set more flowers.

It’s up to us to maintain the flowering cycle by removing spent flowers and so delay the rose hip cycle. Welcome to rose husbandry.

In fact, there are plenty of reasons to deadhead:

 Since we want to keep our roses blooming longer, we only have to snip the spent blooms to keep them from trying to pollinate.

More details about the fine art of summer deadheading are here . .

So, if you do make a mistake with a rose bush . . .

Just remember that a gap in the rose bed can be an opportunity for that new bush you’ve had your eye on – or a birdbath, or even a butterfly water bath. What looks like a major mistake at first is almost always an opportunity five minutes later.

Both newbies and green thumbs will sometimes fail: a too-tender miniature rose that doesn’t survive the winter wind. A rose tree that fell over. An exciting pruning session that leaves a shrub rose looking naked. I’ve had my turn with each of these. Oops . .

I’ve learned to have fun planning what will go in there instead.

Luckily for all of us, Mother Nature is forgiving, and your rose bushes will rebound in time. Making mistakes is part of learning – your roses will usually forgive you, too.