With thousands of roses blooming everywhere, June is the month of roses. But hybrid teas and floribundas will continue to give us abundant flowers throughout the summer months and a suitable fall show if we continue to provide them with reasonable care and attention.
After a burst of spring bloom, even climbing roses will often put forth summer and autumn flowers.
The ability to produce a later bloom – depends mainly on the health and vigor of the plant. Summer care in the rose garden need not be difficult or time-consuming if you follow a regular program, fitting it in with other garden work.
The best insurance against troublemakers in the rose garden keeps the rosebushes sturdy and free from disease.
Spraying and Dusting
Protection of the foliage is essential. Although hybridizers of roses have produced many new disease-resistant varieties, the gardener is still dependent on complete control of regular spraying and dusting to combat black spots and mildew; the two chiefs rose diseases.
Both attack and destroy the leaves, which weakens the plant itself. Blackspot, a prevalent condition, is the more harmful and may cause heavy defoliation if preventive measures are not taken. Mildew is less severe and can more easily be brought under control.
Regular spraying or dusting at intervals of a week or ten days is necessary. It should begin with the unfurling of the leaf buds in the spring and continue until frost. Both upper and lower surfaces of the leaves should be covered thoroughly.
Any good all-purpose spray or dust for these rose diseases should take care of insect pests simultaneously.
Spraying or dusting is optional. I prefer the spray method. For it seems to me that spraying provides better coverage. However, dusting requires less time and has many advocates among rose growers. If dust is used, morning or evening is the best time to apply it, as there is minor air disturbance.
In sections of the country where Japanese beetles are prevalent, they present a real problem to the rose grower. I use to use popular pesticides to control Japanese beetles.
However, I have discontinued using these in my garden because of the destructive effect on the blooms. We cut the flowers early in bud form before the beetles get at them and use them for house decoration or to give away to friends.
A good way of combating Japanese beetles is to use a repellent, which most all-purpose sprays or dust contain, or an insecticide explicitly sold to destroy Japanese beetles. This method, along with knocking the beetles off the plants into a can of kerosene, does not provide a permanent cure.
Perhaps plant quarantines and the more extensive use of the milky disease dust in areas that may be possible breeding places for the Japanese beetle will be the solution.
Feeding
To encourage finer and more constant bloom, some form of summer feeding is recommended. Roses need nourishment in the spring and during their entire growing period. Any organic material used earlier in the season may be supplemented with commercial fertilizer.
A small handful of 5-10-5, or a similar formula, spread around the base of the plant every three weeks or so and well-watered in will do much to improve the summer and fall bloom. Any specially prepared rose foods used by directions will give equally good results.
However, no feeding should be given after the middle of August in order that soft, tender growth may harden up properly for the winter.
Watering
Watering is another requisite during any protracted period of dry weather. The feeding roots of a rose plant can take up only insoluble forms of the elements in the soil that the plant needs to manufacture its food.
When watering is needed, soak the ground thoroughly to at least 6” inches. Sprinkling does more harm than good. If possible, avoid wetting the foliage. A straightforward method of watering is to allow the water to run directly onto the bed with the hose’s nozzle.
Among the modern devices which have made irrigation easier is the water, which attaches . to the end of the hose and releases the water in an even flow directly at the base of the plant. A soil-soaker is another time-saving watering device.
It consists of a porous canvas hose, which does an excellent deep watering job and can be moved easily from place to place. Overhead watering of plants should be done early enough in the day so that the foliage is dry by nightfall.
Mulching
Cultivation after rain is advisable to keep the soil aerated and keep down weeds. A mulch helps reduce evaporation during the hot summer months. This helps hold the ground at a nearly even temperature and will aid in keeping weed growth down.
The mulching material may consist of peat-moss, strawy manure, well-decomposed compost, buckwheat hulls, or even grass clippings if no other substance is available. Peatmoss gives a neat appearance and is an excellent medium for retaining moisture.
My mulch preference is well-rotted, strawy manure; washed in by rain, it also has a certain amount of fertilizing value. The old method of using liquid cow manure is too messy, and the strawy waste accomplishes the same purpose.
After the June bloom is finished, cultivate the soil lightly, remove weeds, and spread a 2- or 3-inch layer of mulch evenly over the rose bed. In the fall, the mulch can be dug into the ground. If commercial fertilizer is used during the summer, the mulching material around the plant need only be loosened, and the fertilizer added.
Cutting Blooms
While it is natural to want to cut roses with long stems, it is not a good practice during the spring and early summer. The plants at this time are putting forth all their efforts to increase growth and flowers, and any unnecessary reduction of branches and foliage tends to upset the balance between the top and root systems.
In so far as hybrid teas and floribunda roses are concerned, you will find the vigor of the bushes will be much more significant and the bloom more profuse if as much foliage as possible is left on the plants. Later in the summer, when the bushes have reached maturity, cutting flowers and leaves will not matter so much.
Pruning
There is often some confusion as to the proper method of pruning climbing and rambler roses. Pruning, in either case, should be done immediately after the flowering period is over.
Since climbing roses produce their flowers on side shoots from older wood, these roses should have the laterals, small branches coining from the main canes, reduced only slightly, as this growth is next year’s flowering wood. Of course, any dead or diseased canes may be removed at any time.
Rambler roses require a different treatment. Next year’s blooms are produced on new wood. Consequently, the canes that have already flowered should be cut back to the ground, and the new shoots coming along trained to take their place.
On this new wood are borne – next year’s flowers. If left unpruned, a rambler rose bush would be a tangled mass of productive and unproductive canes, with the flowering canes having to compete with the useless ones for air, moisture, and nutrients.
Shrub roses require only the elimination of dead and worn-out wood and fine pruning to keep them shapely and within bounds.
Related: More on About Shrub Roses
44659 by Frederic H. Webb