Prepare roses for rigors of winter
Our roses are relishing the cooler weather. After August’s heat, they are again blooming like mad.
But that show will end with the coming of cold weather, and without a little preparation, the roses may not be here for next year.
Make sure plants are getting enough water so they can go into fall and winter with moist roots. Your last fertilization should have been no later than early August.
Fertilizing later encourages new growth that doesn’t have time to harden off before winter.
For now, let roses continue to bloom, but don’t deadhead them. This makes the plant think it is time to produce seed that, in turn, signals the summer is over.
If mildew, black spot and bugs were a problem this year, clean up all dead leaves around the plant and cultivate around them to remove places the diseases and bugs can overwinter.
By the end of this month it will be time to be ready to do the final winter preparations.
The amount of winter preparation depends on the type of roses you have. The three main groupings are the old garden roses, the shrub or species roses and the modern roses.
The old garden and shrub and species roses include the Gallica, Damask, Alba, Centifolia, Moss, China, Bourbon, Hybrid Perpetuals and a host of species roses. They thrive in gardens because they are often very cold tolerant and not prone to bug and disease problems.
If they do freeze to the ground, their roots just send up new shoots in the spring. As a result, there is no need to cover them or do much more than shape them a bit to trim back straggly growth.
Modern or grafted roses are a different story. In the process of creating all the lovely colors and repeat blooms, hardiness and disease/pest resistance went by the wayside. Many of the new hybrids have beautiful flowers, but they can’t sustain vigorous growth without being grafted onto more vigorous root stocks.
Once we have had two or three good, hard frosts and the nighttime temperatures are consistently below freezing, cut long canes back to about 2 to 3 feet tall. Remove any canes smaller than a pencil and any weak, dead or diseased canes.
Leave at least five large canes evenly spaced around the plant.
The last step in the winterization process is to protect the graft point, the swollen rough-looking bulge in the stem. It may be above or below ground a few inches depending on how the rose was planted.
Just before the ground freezes, hill 10 to 12 inches of soil or compost brought in from another part of the garden over the graft point. After the ground has frozen, top the soil with another foot of pine needles or straw for extra insulation.
Interestingly, rose breeders and producers have “rediscovered” the value of hardiness and pest/disease resistance and are growing more modern roses on their own roots without sacrificing flower quality.