I recently bought a soil pH tester and used it to check the pH of my potting mix.. it seems majority of my roses are sitting in compost that are more acidic than the recommended range. It ranges from 5 to unrecordably low.. which is now playing on my mind. I have bought some garden lime a while back and I wonder if this is the time to apply them to my potted roses to try to bring the pH back up to around 6?
The other question I’ve got is how did it get to this stage? I know that I am definitely heavy handed with the fertilising and watering - which I gather could results in leaching etc I also use mostly chemicL fertiliser which can make things worse..
Interestingly though.. my roses all seem to do alright despite the seemingly over acidic potting soil.. in fact the one with the unrecordably low pH is the pot where my yellow floribunda is growing.. and is currently in full bloom..
I did however have some issue with blackspots early this season and I wonder if that may be an indirect result of said acidic soil?
I did the test this evening couple of hours after watering the plants (with some tomato feed mixed in) - hopefully this hasn’t affected the accuracy of the result..
@celcius_kkw, hold off on the lime! I think it’s highly unlikely fertilising has caused such a dramatic drop in your PH to peat bog levels! Even if you overdosed on a very high nitrogen fertiliser, which can lower PH, the effect would be temporary. The potassium-biased tomato feed would more likely raise your PH, if anything. If you have hard tap water that will also raise the PH. I would wait a week then test again, having not fertilised in that time.
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I wouldn’t trust those to be honest...’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, and all that. You’d be seeing signs of nitrogen deficiency among other things, stunted growth, sickly foliage, etc.
Is acidic soil not good for roses? I haven't tested soil in the garden but I have large and happy camellias and rhododendrons in the garden. Those camellias were one of the main plus point of the garden when i came to view the house before buying.
Soil ph is only relevant to roses if you grow them from cuttings, thereby on their own roots, which makes them sensitive to surrounding soil, both in quality and ph level... most of them grown that way prefer slightly acid around 6.5.. there are some that prefer alkaline.. and there are some that simply won't grow on alkaline or turn chlorotic... but this has nothing to do with budded roses..
The only part of the rose that's buried in the soil, or compost, is the rootstock, which is a native of Turkmenistan and Asia Minor... it has long since been proven to grow on all soils in western Europe...
@Marlorena Am I right in thinking that quite a few modern DA have are grown from cuttings as opposed to grafting? The US version of the DA website even gives the rootstock details of each rose, it also identifies which roses you can buy on there own root system. I wonder why DA UK dosent follow suit.
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Interestingly though.. my roses all seem to do alright despite the seemingly over acidic potting soil.. in fact the one with the unrecordably low pH is the pot where my yellow floribunda is growing.. and is currently in full bloom..
I did however have some issue with blackspots early this season and I wonder if that may be an indirect result of said acidic soil?
The only part of the rose that's buried in the soil, or compost, is the rootstock, which is a native of Turkmenistan and Asia Minor... it has long since been proven to grow on all soils in western Europe...
Am I right in thinking that quite a few modern DA have are grown from cuttings as opposed to grafting?
The US version of the DA website even gives the rootstock details of each rose, it also identifies which roses you can buy on there own root system. I wonder why DA UK dosent follow suit.