Jump into spring – sunny days are here and it’s time to get moving and give some attention to our gardens. Your immediate tasks are detailed in our rose growing notes. Also consider rejuvenating your rose garden with a few new top performing roses. Let’s celebrate spring – the season of renewal!

Buy potted roses online from Knight’s Roses – we have hundreds of roses for sale from our extensive collection with delivery Australia wide. Potted Roses will be available to order from 19th of September, and will be shipped from mid-October.

Visit our new website at www.knightsroses.com.au or phone 1300 1ROSES or (08) 8523 1311

Top Row: Best Friend and Elodie Gossuin

Bottom Row: Unconditional Love and Olde Fragrance

Growing roses is an easy and enjoyable activity for the home gardener. Most homes have an informal garden with shrubs, annuals and perennials in borders around a lawn. Roses can contribute significantly to these gardens providing continuous colour, shape, texture and fragrance. Given the wide range of roses available, there is sure to be a rose to fulfil just about any landscaping situation. Ideally, all the elements should combine to provide a pleasing balance.

A harmonious mixed border can be achieved by planting groups of perennials, annuals and small shrubs between your roses. Climbing roses are suitable to make a backdrop against a wall, fence or trellis. Adding some standard roses will add height to the border or in another group plant some tall Hybrid Tea Roses towards the back and in the front plant some compact Floribundas or Miniature roses, or both. As an alternative to Floribundas, try hardy shrub roses. One other consideration is colour harmony. Some great combinations are shades of pink roses planted with perennials and tall bearded iris in blues and mauves. Photo shows ‘Mary Rose’ with Tall Bearded Iris ‘Blue Sapphire’.

Yellow, cream and white roses will blend softly with grey-green foliage.  Silvery foliage plants include ‘Miss Willmot’s Ghost’ Eryngium giganteum, Artemisia (wormwood) and silver ragwort. Carefully selected edging plants provide a neat finish to a border, such as lemon or variegated thyme, species geraniums (cranesbills) and heuchera.

Combining white roses such as ‘Iceberg’ with blue and dark purple perennials achieves a cooler, subtler effect – try Delphiniums, Salvia, Iris, Love-In-A-Mist and Cornflower for lovely blue hues. Importantly, choose companion plants that like the same sunlight and moisture conditions and ensure they are not going to crowd your roses or take over the area.

It’s recommended not to plant violets under your roses as they are particularly susceptible to spider mite, and you don’t want them on your roses.

It’s time to feed all your roses with an organic-based fertiliser. Fertiliser is best applied twice a year, in early September and February. Four times per year in sandy soils. We recommend Neutrog ‘Sudden Impact for Roses’ be applied when the young shoots are around 2cms in length. Application prior to forecast rain is helpful, as this will take the fertiliser with it to the root zone as it soaks in. Otherwise, water the pellets in after application. Sudden Impact for Roses in its pelletised form will break down over next 2 to 3 months and, slowly but continuously, feed the plants.

It is important to note that the higher Potassium and other trace elements in Sudden Impact for Roses is designed to increase resistance to fungal diseases and improve flowering.  If plants are not performing well, supplementary applications of Neutrog Seamungus and GoGo Juice should boost the plant back into strong growth.

Watering
Water your rose bushes deeply.  Generally, watering will not be required until October. The exceptions are newly planted and potted roses which may require regular watering commencing September. These should not be allowed to “dry out”.
Irrigation systems should be checked in early September to ensure they are working effectively and fix any leaks or problems.
Young, newly planted roses will benefit from alternate, fortnightly applications of Liquid Seamungus and GoGo Juice as part of their watering regime.

Time to Mulch
It is recommended that you top up your mulch now, rather than wait for the hot weather to set in. Currently most soils are still moist and mulching will keep that moisture in the soil.
A generous layer of mulch will help conserve water and prevent the soil and plants drying out rapidly, it cools the surface, breaks down to feed the root zone, enables good microbial activity in the soil and also helps to smother weeds.
Neutrog’s ‘Whoflungdung’ is an excellent mulch recommended by the Rose Society. It’s a certified organic mulch which is biologically activated, nutrient rich and weed free. It comes in 20kg compressed bales and can be easily spread. Spread a layer about 5cm in depth and water in to reduce odour and to settle it down.

Removing Spent Flowers
To encourage repeat flowering, remove dead blooms. Generally, remove the old bloom and a portion of stem down to the second five-leaflet leaf. Occasionally, some ‘blind’ spring shoots stop growing and don’t produce flowers. These can be trimmed to encourage a new flowering shoot.  A non-performing rose bush is a sign that it is lacking fertiliser or may be diseased.

Pests and Diseases
Unfortunately, pests and diseases can frustrate rose growers who want clean, healthy bushes. There are now many natural remedies for pests. These include the presence of predatory wasps to control aphids and bacterial laden sprays such as ‘Success’ or ‘Dipel’ to control both bad insects and grubs. Some initial outbreaks of aphids can be severe and these should be washed off or sprayed with a natural product, such as Yates ‘Nature’s Way Natrasoap Pest Spray’. Pest Oils can also be used to control insects and will also assist in fungal treatment.

Fungal issues, if left untreated, can severely impede the performance of rose plants. Prevention is better than a cure and applications of preventative fungal sprays a fortnight apart in early spring will certainly stop major outbreaks of Mildew and Black Spot. Natural oil sprays, such as Eco Oil, and milk spray (1-part full cream milk to 10 parts water) are good “gentle on the environment”, preventative sprays. Mancozeb or Triforine sprays offer chemical treatments which have proven very effective. If a major outbreak occurs, regular fungal spray treatments will be necessary to get these diseases under control.
For more information on roses, visit sarose.org.au  

Come and visit Knight’s Roses at Adelaide’s sensational new garden event. The Adelaide International Rose and Garden Expo will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre, to coincide with the World Rose Convention. The Expo will run over the weekend of Friday 28th October (4pm – 9pm), Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th (9am – 5pm). It will showcase the National Rose Show, Trade booths and spectacular floral displays featuring over 10,000 roses.  There will be a daily “speaker’s program” featuring celebrities and garden experts and free children’s activities on Saturday and Sunday (10am – 5pm) run by Nature Play SA.

We hope to see you at this exciting new event.  Tickets $20 per person, with children under 14 free, on sale now through Eventbrite.  For more details visit the Convention website www.wrc22.aomevents.com.au