Awareness is Critical When Caring for Roses

By Twyla Ness

Caring for roses doesn't just mean watering and putting on a little fertilizer and hoping for plenty of sunlight. There's more to keeping a garden full of healthy rose plants. First of all, successful rose gardening involves trying to keep them from being susceptible to rose diseases or pests. But once those things do arise, you need some idea of how to treat them. Usually the response is as simple as pruning off a diseased branch, or perhaps spraying to eliminate pests. Keeping an eye on these things will help your plants achieve proper growth and produce healthy, beautiful flowers.

Of course prevention is where you start, with a garden design that includes proper soil drainage and good air circulation, as a defense against fungus. Caring for roses means planning for their protection before disease or pests even enter the picture.

Keep in mind that the hybrid tea rose falls prey to diseases more easily than other varieties. Shrub landscape roses are much more resistant, so at the very least you should have a mix of the two types of roses, to help minimize the incidence of disease.

If you do discover pests or diseases, though, often you can nip them, as it were, in the bud. Pruning roses below canker or black spots can often eliminate those problems. Be sure to throw away the diseased branches; never mix them into a compost bin, or they could spread the disease the next season. With rose care, you need to maintain constant vigilance against tiny insects that might suck juices from the plants, and fungus and diseases that might harm their structure.

Home gardening is literally a ground up sort of endeavor, and when working with roses, this is especially true. Your goal is a well grown, healthy rose garden, but to create it, you need to be prepared for things that might possibly go wrong. In caring for roses, you must plant, feed, water and prune properly, but you also must have some idea what to do if a disease strikes some of your plants or if you discover that pests have moved in.

Employing some of the above gardening tips can help either to prevent or to deal with disease and pests that might attack your roses. Often the solutions to such issues are as simple as doing a little strategic pruning or using a spray when unwanted insects first appear. Caring for roses starts with soil preparation and the design of the garden itself, and moves right through the life of the plant, as you keep a watchful eye and deal with problems as they come up. This is the strategy for creating a healthy garden. - 30228

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