Rose in Pot - Charles Darwin potting mistake made?

Posts

• bullfinch Posts: 692

  July 2023

  I hope @Tack won't mind me saying, but they have some beautiful roses in pots, perhaps s/he wouldn't mind popping onto this thread and giving some tips?

  1
• Tack Posts: 1,367

  July 2023

  Goodness @bullfinch, that is kind of you to say (female btw). I have only been growing roses in pots for 3 years so not an expert at all. I have always mixed up the growing media particularly during lockdown when I used what I could get but they have always been a blend of a majority of loam/garden soil with home or bought compost and added vermiculite. I certainly wouldn't do anything to your rose now though @LindzH, I think just make sure it isn't getting waterlogged. Is it potted in its final large pot? If so you could wait till you need to repot to give it a different growing medium. If you think, in spite of feeding, that the rose is not thriving then consider repotting in the winter but honestly I doubt you need to.

  As to feed; I give a Spring feed of a David Austin type of rose fertiliser but they have changed the formula, I liked the older one better and Vitax Azalea seems to be a like for like substitution. During the blooming season the pots do well with fortnightly ish watering with added tomato feed at about half the dilution rate on the bottle. If the leaves look a bit yellow then substituting this feed with a seaweed with added iron solves that. In June give some more of the rose feed unless you have bought one that is slow release for the whole season. I hope you enjoy your rose, they are tougher than we think and I am sure it is fine.
  

  2
• fromtheshires Posts: 72

  July 2023

  I think it will be fine in john innes number 3. I have a DA rose in a pot in just that and it does absolutely fine.
  
  You don’t need anything special to feed it with, i just use tomorite and it works just fine. 

  
  

  The only thing you may struggle with is the pot size as it needs to be fairly big. To give you an idea of the size of my pot, it takes two bags of compost.

  1
• LindzH Posts: 37

  July 2023 edited July 2023

  Thanks both. I think I'll pot up at the end of the season as I put it in the largest pot I had at the time, but I've got a bigger one now. 
  I have a little tomato feed left so will use that before the seaweed then. 
  Thanks again

  0
• Busy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043

  July 2023 edited July 2023

  I grew roses in pots for years before moving house. I used to mix garden soil with compost and rotted manure then top up with compost to stop weeds. Every year I scraped up the top layer of compost and replaced it with new compost. I'm sure your rose will be fine. You could mulch it with compost. 
  
  I used pots 60cm deep. I fed and watered the roses more often than roses in the ground as the fertiliser can be watered out. Roses in pots also like a liquid feed with a tomato feed like Tomorite every couple of weeks, but that has already been said.

  Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.

  1