Where Should I Plant This Rose?

I know many of you have done this, too, so I don’t feel quite so guilty. So many times I know better, but I can’t resist nature, not of plants or my own at times.

We are past the season of planting roses… the heat of summer is coming, but a beautiful rose plant was on sale. Forget the fact that you have no real place prepared for it, or even a vague idea of where to put it, it was a beautiful fragrant rose, and it says that it is hardy to zone 4.

Of course, that guarantees nothing, but the idea that this lovely thing just might survive the winters, just might perfume the garden in years to come, is all but too much to resist. So I didn’t resist. I bought it, and now it sits with the other spontaneous temptations that I gave into this week. I just hope I don’t do penance trying to keep these things alive if the weather turns dry this year.

And the roses are such a pretty shade of pinky apricot… and they smell so heavenly.

Apricot Drift

A bit worse for wear due to not being yet planted, etc.

It promises to look like this!

How do we plant roses at this time? Be sure to align the plant at the same depth of soil as it grew in the pot. Like other shrubs, I like to add some amendments to the soil: some compost, peat if the clay is very dense.

Water it in well with initially “mudding it”, and thereafter just making sure the plant doesn’t dry out before the roots are established. Good drainage is needed, so don’t keep mudding it.

Don’t fertilize, unless you use something mild like transplant fertilizer and don’t fertilize after midsummer date in July. Give the rose bush time to get ready for winter. It needs to “harden up” which it won’t do if lushly growing from lots of extra fertilizing.

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© 2013 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.