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Chimney soot to protect roses from diseases.
Michael Sands
Posts: 67
in Talkback
Is it true that Chimney soot is good for roses, it is an old belief and I wonder if it is true after seeing on Countryfile how organic charcoal is being used to protect Ash trees now from Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.
Just curious if it would work on black spot as well?
0
Posts
Can't answer, I'm sorry. However, I was at the gardening show in Edinburgh one year, and the fellow with that tache from Beechgrove Garden was there answering questions. I asked the best way to stop black spot, he said was darned near impossible due to the fact that there was no smoke in the atmosphere (due to C.H.), and that when there were coal fires it was never heard of - b*ll*ks!! I live in rural France now, and everyone has logburners, have just as much black spot now as I did in Scotland
I don't know about applying soot but I do know that before we went smokeless around here we didn't get much black spot on roses. Typhoo I don't think people are burning coal on their log burners, I imagine the carbon from coal was the think that helped
I MIGHT BE WRONG so don't shoot me down.
When I started working in a GC from school in 1979 I was told that blackspot came back after " the clean air act 1956" which stopped a lot of the sulphur being pumped into the air.
BUT I MIGHT BE WRONG.
I agree Hosta as did my long departed dad who used to graft his own roses
whew
So we tache man wisnae talking b*ll*ks then?? - my apologies for all the years of being disparaging of all the advise you have given out on BG!!!
Yep, 'twas the Sulphur from burning coal which helped. Didn't help our lungs though, or forests because of the acid rain it caused.
I am old enough to remember pre-smokeless zone in Manchester when almost all houses were burning coal [ plus all the stuff from factory chimneys] and Black spot was unknown, considered a disease of rural areas. Now susceptible varieties of roses are covered in the stuff, but thats a small price to pay for all the improvements being smokeless brought including much greater range of plants in our gardens.
I was just wondering, makes you wonder if adding powdered charcoal when planting roses would help them, thanks all.