@Pianoplayer, glad your SWE is a good bloomer, that’s how I hoped mine would be. It does make all the difference when you get tons of blooms to make up for their short life.
@Tack probably just as well we resisted the red lure. I know the same roses are often sold under the wrong/different name but you wonder what they really are when even HMF haven’t got them listed. I added [in commerce as] ‘tea’ rose Francis Dubreuil to my Peter Beales order, but at least I know the experts are pretty sure it’s the old Kordes hybrid tea Barcelona.
No tea drinkers in this household and few guests either. For a while I was boiling water and making tea just for roses but that seemed ridiculous, so now just chuck a couple of unused teabags and a bit of iron powder in the watering cans and I think that does help with my alkaline soil/hard water/chlorosis issues.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Sorry to hear about your dental pain, poppy- nothing worse.
I am taking notes re: teabags. My town has the hardest water in Britain, apparently. With 5+ camellias, three blueberry bushes and many heathers (only three roses, but I have seven on order...🙄), the rainwater disappears fast. Edit: forgot the two azaleas.
@poppyfield64 Hope you're feeling better! I tend to mulch with one of those 'border gold' type composts.
Next year I'm trying a new regime...Before things leaf out I'm going to put down some Sulphur Rose to hopefully kill off some spores on the soil. I'll be putting down a layer of alfalfa as well. I already have these things so nothing wasted there. I'm going to try out DA's fertiliser as well, twice yearly, and in-between as a top up every couple of weeks, do a foliar spray of seaweed + sequestered iron, and Uncle Tom's. I struggle with chlorosis here with our pockets of chalky soil plus hard water, so if I can keep it at least somewhat at bay, that would be nice.
Much of my garden comes up on the meter as 6 or 6.5 pH, so I have been digging in Chempak sulphur granules around my ericacious-loving plants to hopefully offset the hard water they sometimes receive in the summer months. Would you recommend doing this around the roses, too?
I feed all the plants with Tomorite, ericacious or liquid Rose food fortnightly, and am mulching with bark this autumn, but haven't gone down the seaweed / DA rose food bottomless money pit yet.;)
On an unrelated note, can anyone recommend a rose for a 2m metal obelisk (which will probably have to be sunk a foot or so into the earth)? I only bought it because it was going for £5.
Usually I use Top Rose, but as I was buying some DA roses with the 15% coupon (ty Edhelka), I thought I would try their fertiliser and see if it works some magic . Top Rose works out to be about half as expensive as DA, but in the grand scheme of things, for me two bags of DA food (with the discount) works out to be £12.75 for a year's feeding for over 60 roses, which I think is reasonable to experiment a bit and see if I get better results. The seaweed+iron and Uncle Tom's isn't too bad price-wise as I do a foliar feeding by necessity, so a little goes a long way. I haven't worked out the price difference between Tomorite and Uncle Tom's.
@sarinka Do you have any preference for colour, fragrance, type of rose, etc?
I'll do some more feeding experiments next year. All my experience so far and research points out to two things - my sandy soil doesn't hold nutrients well (working on this is a never-ending job) and nitrogen leaches out quickly (I need to feed more and focus mainly on N). I am quite sure I have enough potassium but possibly very little of calcium and magnesium and plan to focus on these too. And I am considering getting a soil test done in winter.
I still have a thick layer of bark mulch in my rose bed so won't add anything there, just a top-up in late winter. I will add some manure in my other beds. I also want to do some long-term soil-improving I am considering rock dust (controversial but not expensive), biochar and seaweed meal. I'll also sprinkle BFB everywhere, I like to use it here in early spring in almost all borders. I won't continue using alfalfa, I am not that impressed. And I bought DA rose food, I think chicken manure based food should be good here. Actually, I should probably use more of chicken manure as a slow release source of N but I've never used it and worry about it being too stinky (is it?).
I am mainly planning to mulch with homemade compost and used compost from annuals/vegetables pots. Not sure if used compost will add any nutrition at all to the soil but I am hoping it will help to slowly improve the texture of the hard sticky london clay.
The homemade compost was mostly kitchen scrapes and cardboards. I wish i had any better source of browns than cardboard. If you make compost at home, what do you use for brown?
I also collected leaves of the neighbour's poplar trees that fall on our lawn but i doubt my leaf mould would be ready.
Thank you for the code @edhelka Imulch with garden compost which is kitchen plant waste, garden trimmings and lawn clippings with leaves (a lot) in the autumn. I only recently learned we are doing it all wrong but it seems to make great compost, and the worms and slow worms like it.
Usually I use Top Rose, but as I was buying some DA roses with the 15% coupon (ty Edhelka), I thought I would try their fertiliser and see if it works some magic . Top Rose works out to be about half as expensive as DA, but in the grand scheme of things, for me two bags of DA food (with the discount) works out to be £12.75 for a year's feeding for over 60 roses, which I think is reasonable to experiment a bit and see if I get better results. The seaweed+iron and Uncle Tom's isn't too bad price-wise as I do a foliar feeding by necessity, so a little goes a long way. I haven't worked out the price difference between Tomorite and Uncle Tom's.
@sarinka Do you have any preference for colour, fragrance, type of rose, etc?
I don't need any more yellow or purple roses, and want chiefly want to add white ones. I lack the rosarian's vocabulary to describe what it is I like, but a certain richness and deliciousness. The picture of "Boule de Neige" on Trevor White's website makes me crave icecream!
I haven't grown anything up an obelisk and might try a rose and some sweetpeas, but not sure if that's possible.
Posts
@Tack probably just as well we resisted the red lure. I know the same roses are often sold under the wrong/different name but you wonder what they really are when even HMF haven’t got them listed. I added [in commerce as] ‘tea’ rose Francis Dubreuil to my Peter Beales order, but at least I know the experts are pretty sure it’s the old Kordes hybrid tea Barcelona.
I am taking notes re: teabags. My town has the hardest water in Britain, apparently. With 5+ camellias, three blueberry bushes and many heathers (only three roses, but I have seven on order...🙄), the rainwater disappears fast. Edit: forgot the two azaleas.
Next year I'm trying a new regime...Before things leaf out I'm going to put down some Sulphur Rose to hopefully kill off some spores on the soil. I'll be putting down a layer of alfalfa as well. I already have these things so nothing wasted there. I'm going to try out DA's fertiliser as well, twice yearly, and in-between as a top up every couple of weeks, do a foliar spray of seaweed + sequestered iron, and Uncle Tom's. I struggle with chlorosis here with our pockets of chalky soil plus hard water, so if I can keep it at least somewhat at bay, that would be nice.
We shall see how it goes!
I feed all the plants with Tomorite, ericacious or liquid Rose food fortnightly, and am mulching with bark this autumn, but haven't gone down the seaweed / DA rose food bottomless money pit yet.;)
On an unrelated note, can anyone recommend a rose for a 2m metal obelisk (which will probably have to be sunk a foot or so into the earth)? I only bought it because it was going for £5.
@sarinka Do you have any preference for colour, fragrance, type of rose, etc?
The homemade compost was mostly kitchen scrapes and cardboards. I wish i had any better source of browns than cardboard. If you make compost at home, what do you use for brown?
I also collected leaves of the neighbour's poplar trees that fall on our lawn but i doubt my leaf mould would be ready.
I don't need any more yellow or purple roses, and want chiefly want to add white ones. I lack the rosarian's vocabulary to describe what it is I like, but a certain richness and deliciousness. The picture of "Boule de Neige" on Trevor White's website makes me crave icecream!
I haven't grown anything up an obelisk and might try a rose and some sweetpeas, but not sure if that's possible.