You have finished the pruning and are ready to sit back and do nothing until the first lot of deadheads arrive in November.
How wrong you are. First, you need to get those secateurs, loppers and saws out and clean them of all the old sap, sharpen them and oil them so that they do not go rusty before you need to use them again.
This is the time when the dreaded blackspot will start to make its presence known. The fungal spores are in the air floating from your next door neighbour’s garden ready to settle on all those new leaves that are starting to develop. To defeat them, you need to start your spray regime.
The purpose of spraying at this time is to apply a coating on the leaves to prevent the fungal spores from resting there. There are many commercial preparations on the shelf for this exercise, but why waste your money on chemicals which may or may not be nasty to your health and the health of the garden.
Be a cheapskate and look for sprays that are cheap, and safe to use. For example, a litre of full cream milk, mixed with ten litres of water in a pressure spray, will do the trick. Use it as the leaves begin to appear, respray every ten days or thereabouts, replenish it if it rains and most importantly don’t be sparing of it. Spray every surface of the leaves until it drips off – it’s cheap so don’t hesitate.
The next job is to look for suckers and remove them. A sucker is root stock growth coming from below the budding joint, the scion. When a root has been damaged, there is a strong chance for the rootstock to develop its own shoot. You need to dig down, following the sucker until you can see where it is coming from the root and cut it off cleanly there. Do not cut it off at ground level or you will have a stronger growth with multiple stems arising. Also do not cut off any basal shoots as they are the next generation of canes of the desired rose. If the new growth is coming from above the scion, it is a basal shoot.
Now you need to feed your roses. Spring is when a rose bush is trying to make maximum growth, so help it out by giving every bush a good handful of food, spread evenly around the plant. Wet the ground before spreading, then water it in well. Talking of water, make sure every bush has at least a bucketful of water every week. Avoid daily sprinkling, as this leads to shallow root systems. A deep drenching is far better so that the roots will go well down into the ground, stabilizing your plant and making it much stronger.
Keep you eye out for aphids, scale, powder mildew, rust, and all those other pests and diseases that affect your bushes. Attack each one as you discover it. If you do not know how to treat these, ask one of our members how they go about it. Or go on to the website and read all about them there.
Suddenly you realise, with all the work I have outlined, that Spring has departed and it is time to start deadheading.
Good gardening. Wal
