| It's been my experience that the best way to grow organically is to make sure you have the best possible soil. i.e., lots of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous and all the normal trace minerals (like magnesium sulphate). You get this by using organic amendments (leaves, hay, mushrooms, manure) and by adding fertilizer. But the soil base itself is much more important than the fertilizer. If your soil is good, your plants will withstand disease, drought, whatever, much better than if the soil is poor. Use hardwood and leaves (if you have access) from hardwood trees (oak) on top of your soil as mulch. Amend or cover soil (whichever) with horse manure. (You can add leaves too). Don't go and buy the stuff, what you buy has salt added. Free manure from a horse stable or farm is fabulous, it contains wheat hay, alphalpha etc if the horses are fed well. The manure prevents diseases. It even allows you to replant roses in old rose holes according to Ashdown Roses and to David Stone of Montisfont Abbey of England. (supposedly a no no). I don't bother to let the stuff age. A plant you buy is usually old enough to handle it (except a tiny, newly rooted cutting or "band" like what you get from Heirloom. If you go to a horse-feed store, you will find wonderful horse alphalfa, cottonseed meal, and a bunch of other stuff that you may want to consider adding. Horse manure is easier and cheaper, unless you have no access or way to transport it. Roses Unlimited’s website lists the stuff to add to a mix for "perfect" roses. I never find it all, just try for most. Peat added to the soil is good because then the soil retains the water you gave the roses. My soil is sand, which has no nutrients and too much drainage. But roses need drainage, right? Some soil is all clay, has no drainage, and the roses can drown. So amendments depend on your particular soil. Spray? I use plain water, believe it or not. It washes off black spot spores. Another supposed no no. Where I live, in the hot, humid south-east coast, is supposed to be the most disease and insect prone place. If I can go without fungicides and insecticides, anyone can. They say to water at ground level or your roses will be diseased. I think it's a myth to prevent diseases that way. Though watering at the roots is necessary to give the rose a nice, deep watering. (They love water and food!). So do both types of watering. I find that a nice sprinkler shower is appreciated by my roses when the heat index is 110 degrees. Another way to get rid of disease? Prune out diseased parts and throw away. Presto, disease is gone. Free, and 100% organic. Black spot causes defoliation. So you lose the leaves, and new, clean ones grow back. Not bad at all! I don't ever expect a plant to look perfect, though most of mine are free of black spot. Simply, it is better (to me) to ignore much of what the chemical gardeners try to eradicate. (I sprayed like crazy my first two years. Then I stopped. And my garden naturalized. Predators like spiders and bees eat the leaf eaters, and I have little disease because of healthy soil. Before, it was a chemical dump with no predators and happy leaf eaters and too much disease). If you like, you can amend the soil with liquid sulphur in the wintertime. (Never when it is warm). It prevents black spot, and you only have to do it about every 5 years. I've done it to about half my plants, but I don't get carried away because it makes the soil very acidic. And my soil already has a ph of 4 naturally. I have to add lime to raise it to the rose preferred number of 6.5, and must add even more lime if I use sulphur. But it is an option. Rose Tone (from Lowes or wherever) is a nice organic rose food. If they don't have it, you can use Plant Tone for shrubs with no problem. The Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium are the main ingredients and are represented by the numbers 5-3-3 in that brand. You'll notice other brands might be 30-30-30 etc. Those are much stronger. If you bring a nice sample of your soil to your county extension, they can tell you how strong or weak your fertilizer needs to be to grow roses well in your particular soil. Mills Magic is a wonderful, organic food; you can order it from Roses Unlimited, but I wouldn’t bother until you have more roses. Wow! Much too complicated. Let me recap. Roses need:
Food
Water
Shelter: shelter being the soil. They also need sun. Add organics to the soil (especially manure) to shelter and nourish properly. Use nice fertilizer. Prune out anything that looks nasty. Water at roots. Water overhead. Simple. To refine for your personal soil, get a soil test. |
