November Rose Care

November is here and while we still have a few blooms hanging on, it is time to get ready for winter.

Please continue to give your roses at least an inch of water per week if it is not raining. 

If you still have any black spot hanging on, spray your roses with Daconil.  Daconil is a great cool weather fungicide.  You will also need to clean the diseased leaves off of your roses along with the old mulch, if you have not done so already.  Be sure and remove disease trash from the beds and bag and remove from your property altogether. 

If you have not fertilized with 0-20-20, do so now.  If you have another dose will not hurt.  Use one cup for large bushes and one half cup for smaller bushes.  If you have not taken a soil sample this year, now would be an excellent time to do so.  Your local Extension Office has the sample boxes and instructions free of charge.  Once you have taken the samples, return them to the Extension Office along with six dollars per sample and they will forward them to Mississippi State University’s Soil Testing Lab for you.  Free shipping, you can’t beat that.  In about two weeks, your results will come to your home address and the great part is they will be in English, not some crazy, jargon that only a chemist can understand.  If you are uncertain about your results, send me an email at colorsbytim@hotmail.com and I will call you and help you out.

I would say about the middle of the month would be a good time to wind prune your taller roses.  Cut them back to chest high or about four feet for you taller folks.  I would also recommend pruning the lower twiggy growth from your hybrid tea roses.

Now it is time to finish up with maintenance for the winter by spreading a layer of your favorite mulch.  I like to put roughly four inches and for hybrid tea roses put an extra dose mounded up around the graft union.  This is a vulnerable point during extreme cold weather.  I recommend about eight to ten inches of mulch to be mounded up around the graft.

The roses have been beautiful this year and have brought much joy and color to our landscape.  They have also made many gorgeous bouquets in our home.

Tune in next January for some good tips to a beautiful rose garden.  If you have any questions or comments send me an email. 

Happy gardening and keep digging in the dirt.