How to Care for New Rose Bushes
- 1). Choose a sunny planting site suited to the roses you're planting. Roses need sun to help them resist pests and disease.
- 2). Prepare your soil. Roses thrive in rich, well-drained soil. Add compost, peat moss, well-rotted manure and leaves. Turn the soil to a depth of at least 12 inches and thoroughly mix it with amendments.
- 3). Prepare bare root roses. Remove packaging, examine and gently spread roots, prune away broken, diseased or damaged spots then soak--roots only--in water for at least one hour, preferably overnight, to hydrate them.
- 4). Plant in spring after danger of killing frost is past. Dig planting holes and add several tablespoons of superphosphate--for healthy root growth--to the bottom of each. Plant container rose bushes so the top of the soil ball is even with surrounding ground. For bare root roses, dig a hole deep enough for all roots and wide enough for their natural spread. Add a "cone" of soil at the bottom of the hole--to support the plant's weight--and set the plant on the cone with roots spread around it like a skirt. The bud union should be several inches aboveground. Fill the planting holes with soil and pat firm.
- 5). Water thoroughly, saturating the entire root area. Continue to water deeply at least once a week through summer and fall, to promote deep roots. Use drip irrigation, soakers or soaker hoses and avoid overhead watering.
- 6). Mulch with several inches of organic matter--straw, leaves, dried pine needles, wood chips--to prevent weeds and conserve soil moisture.
- 7). Encourage new growth by pruning the top portions of the newly planted rose back to 6 or 8 inches above the "knob" or graft union.
- 8). Fertilize only after your rose has produced its first blooms, to avoid burning roots. Roses are heavy feeders, though, so thereafter add slow-release rose fertilizer after each bloom period. Push aside mulch, lightly working fertilizer into the soil surface, then return the mulch.
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