Coming up roses

By Kristyne E. Demske
C & G Staff Writer

Photo by Kristyne E. Demske This old-fashioned rose bush is heavy with blooms that come back several times each summer.

Varieties abound for novices, seasoned gardeners

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, but words used to describe growing the plants often aren’t as nice. Temperamental, difficult, filling gardeners with dread, roses have come to have a thorny reputation.

But growing the beautiful blooms doesn’t have to be a trying task. Maurice Sauriol, a Fraser resident who is president of the Metropolitan Rose Society, a local branch of the American Rose Society, said roses just need care and attention.

“A lot of people think roses are hard, (but) they’re not difficult — they just need a little attention,” said Sauriol, who has been a member of the rose society for more than 20 years and recently took home several awards — including the top two honors — at a rose show in Roseville. “There’s a constant amount of looking after, spraying them, and fertilizing and pruning.”

Choosing a rose variety is up to the tastes of the gardener, Sauriol said, explaining that “old garden roses” tend to be more aromatic than other roses.

“The most popular for beauty are the hybrid tea, and then you have the floribundas,” he said. “The hybrid tea will probably have, like, one rose blossom at the end of each stem, but the floribundas will have several roses come up on each stem.

“The hybrid teas are a little bit harder to grow, but I think they’re more beautiful. The shrub, the old-fashioned garden roses are, I think, easier to grow.”

Although he agrees they’re the “most beautiful” flower, Jim Welch of Jim’s Flowers, 805 S. Campbell in Royal Oak, said they’re also “temperamental, temperamental, temperamental plants.” But for those who want the look of a rose without the hassle, he stocks the most disease-resistant roses, like carpet roses, Knockout roses and the Proven Winners series.

“They’re very, very easy, but they’re a much smaller flower,” he said. “They do put out a lot of color. These are disease-resistant roses that require, literally, no maintenance.”

Todd Quick, a tree and shrub manager at Bordine’s, said there are about a half-dozen varieties of the Knockout roses, which keep blooming all summer. Knockouts are more of a shrub rose, as opposed to carpet roses, which creep more along the ground. Both varieties will grow to be about 3 or 4 feet wide, Quick said.

No matter the variety, Welch said, when planting a rose, gardeners should make sure the soil is well-aerated, not just hard-packed clay. Roses also should be spread far enough apart that they won’t touch each other, which can cause more disease problems.

“They’re the prettiest flower in the world, (that a rose plant) takes the most care just makes sense,” Welch said. “Nothing comes free in life. I love them, and I dread them.”

The hybrid teas and floribundas are more susceptible to black spot, a fungus that grows on rose leaves and causes plants to lose their leaves. It looks like what the name indicates — black spots begin to spread on the rose’s leaves.

“They have a nice scent,” Quick said of roses. “They get bigger and they look real pretty, but they have more problems.”

There are ways to prevent black spot or to control an outbreak, though, Quick said.

“There’s a product called Bayer All-in-One Rose and Flower Care,” he said. It serves as a preventative measure to be used in spring. “You mix it with water and you pour it around the base, and that controls insects, disease and has a fertilizer.

“If you’ve got an outbreak, then you spray it with a fungicide. If it’s really heavy, the best way is to trim the bush back a little bit, and you’d want to spray it with a fungicide.”

He recommends surrounding rose bushes with organic or wood mulch — not decorative stone — to conserve water, control the soil temperature, prevent weeds from growing and add nutrients back to the soil.

Sauriol said good rose fertilizer with nitrogen, pulp ash and phosphorous is important for the health of the plant. Roses should get an inch of water a week.

“If you think about a rose bush that’s about 3 foot in diameter, you have to fill that pen once a week,” he said.

Avoid watering the plants on the foliage, and give them a drink early in the day so the plant can dry out during the day, Welch said. A wet plant at night is more susceptible to powdered mildew outbreaks.

Sauriol also sprays fungicide on his rose bushes about every seven to nine days to keep them healthy; he recommends Daconil or Rose Pride by Ortho.

“If a rose is kept healthy and fed properly, they don’t tend to have any problems with insects,” he said. “I like to alternate; I’ll have five or six different sprays, and I don’t use the same ones twice. I spray them alternatively.”

When it comes to pruning, there are “various schools of thought,” he said. Sauriol said he cuts his bushes down to 20 inches in late fall to get them ready for winter, then covers them with rose cones topped with a brick, or mounds a foot of mulch, topsoil or leaves around the base of the plant to protect the graft. Even with a cone, Sauriol recommends mounding about 6 inches of mulch around the base of a rose bush. Knockout roses and other shrub roses don’t need cones for winter, Quick said.

“In some years, when it’s been a hard winter, I use the cones, and then some winters, like last winter, I didn’t use the cones because it was mild,” Sauriol said. The cold, icy wind of February and March is the hardest on the plants. “The wind dries out the rose stalks, and that’s what does the most harm.”

He trims again in the spring.

“In springtime, cut all the deadwood out, and I shape. Leave no more than five or seven stalks,” he said.

Planting can be done anytime, “as long as the ground is not frozen,” Quick said. “Once you get into late summer, you don’t see too many roses for sale because the growers have their crop, and once that’s depleted, that’s it — but really anytime is fine.”

Anyone who wants to focus on growing roses can benefit from joining a rose society, Sauriol said.

“They’ll have a meeting once a month and … people are shown how to plant roses, and there’s a lot of good information,” he said. “Every city, every area will have a rose society.”

Meetings are fun to “brag about our roses and talk about all of the problems we’re currently having and all the new roses that are coming out,” he said. “Join the American Rose Society, there’s a beautiful monthly magazine (with) so much good, technical information, and it’s not expensive.”

For more information on rose care, or to find a rose expert or a local rose society, visit www.ars.org.

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Kristyne E. Demske at kdemske@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1041.