The roses in our garden are really enjoying the hot weather of late and are blooming prolifically. In recent past summers, many have not performed as well as they might. Their blooms have not opened properly and have gone brown, hanging on the plants like paper bags due to the amount of rain.
My rambling roses are in full flower, a little later than usual due to the cold spring, but what a show! Once they have finished flowering, I will prune out some of the old, woody growth and tie in some of the new shoots on horizontal wires to create the structure for next year’s blooms. These will produce short growths along these main stems and by training the branches horizontally, fences and walls will be festooned with flowers rather than only the tops of the plants where we cannot appreciate the scent and color until the petals fall to the ground!
Once the rambling roses have been pruned, I give them a feed with Top Rose – a handful scattered around the base of the plants, avoiding the stems is watered in well. Roses do not like to go short of water during dry weather, so I always keep an eye on them and give them a good drink a couple of times each week with the can. I am not a fan of watering with a hose – lawn sprinklers are one thing but I find a watering can much more effective for plants in borders and containers. That way I can direct the water to the plant’s roots much more easily. A mulch of well rotted manure – available in bags as blended stable manure from my local Notcutt’s garden center – conditions the soil and completes the job until the autumn when the plants are tidied once again.
Climbing and bush roses are also flourishing in the sun - just some dead heading required for the moment. The main pruning time for these is autumn and again in spring to prepare the plants for the summer show. However, I still like to feed them now, after their first flush of flowers and apply more rotted manure to help keep the roots cool and seal in some moisture.
I noticed that the ends of some of the shoots have curled up and the young growth is distorted - a sign of Green Fly (Aphid). Sure enough they were there when I looked more closely under the leaves, so I have sprayed the plants with a systemic insecticide that acts within a few hours. Rather than a contact spray which actually has to hit the pest to kill it, a systemic one is taken into the plant and kills the pest as it feeds. A light spray of Roseclear to cover the leaf is all that is needed, so a ‘ready to use’ bottle really does go a long way! As well as killing aphid, Roseclear also helps to control rust and mildew, but by keeping my roses well fed and watered, hopefully attacks of these diseases will be kept to a minimum.