ADVERTISEMENT
5. Watering Requirement
Roses need daily watering and a well draining soil is very important and at the same time moisture around roots has to be maintained by adding stuff like compost and coco peat. You can add a little more compost like decomposed cowdung or some extra leaf compost in your potting mix. One important watering tip for roses to avoid fungus is Water early in the morning before sun starts. Watering in evening can keep it damp and encourage fungus.
4. Fertilizer
Rose plant requires regular feeding to increase flowering both number of flowers and also to achieve big sized roses. If you use chemical fertilizers, NPK 20 20 20 and DAP crystals that’s Di ammonium phosphate alternating every week is sufficient to produce good flowering. But if you are completely organic like me, Consider adding a hand full of vermicompost or decomposed cow dung in each container every 15 days after raking or tilling the top soil. Raking or tilling the soil is itself an important task to improve soil aeration and improve your plants health.
Then, You can also perform a foliar spray by mixing 1 teaspoon of Epsom salt in 1 litre of water once every 15 days for best results.
3. Pest Control
This is most important step. The only regular pesticide I recommend is Neem oil weekly once spray. This prevents and cures a lot of diseases and pests on rose plants. 5 to 10 ml neem oil mixed in 1 litre of water with few drops of liquid soap or shampoo. There are two most common disease attacks on rose. One is the Rose die back disease and the black spot rose disease, both are caused by fungus.
2. Dead Heading
This is another important task most of us are lazy to perform. Just pluck those dead and fading flowers from the plant. This will conserve the plants energy to product more new buds rather than diverting the energy in seed formation. Performing dead heading as soon as the flowers starts to fade is beneficial instead of waiting for the flower to dry completely.
1. Pruning or Trimming Rose Plants
This is important task most of us neglect. Do not hesitate or be afraid to prune you rose plant. You are not gonna kill it. Pruning is an important gardening secret to healthy rose bush because this encourages branching and makes your plant more bushy as a result more number of flowers. Perform at least a basic pruning what is called soft pruning in early spring season once in a year.
I have a detailed article on Pruning concepts and types of pruning.
Now! Two Bonus Tips:
Firstly About Soil PH: Rose loves slightly acidic soil. If you have a PH testing meter you can check it by dipping into your soil. Rose loves a ph of 6.0 to 6.5. To acidify your soil you can water it by mixing 10 gms of alum in 1 litre of water, once every 15 days or a month. This will certainly improve your plants health and increase flowering because acidic soil is important for nutrient absorption.
Secondly, You can add Mustard Cake Tea or Even used tea dust as discussed in my previous article on Used tea for Plants.
ADVERTISEMENT
