THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603090068
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT STIFFLER, GARDENING COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
THIS IS THE month to prune roses and plant new bare-root ones. Mail-order nurseries ship roses bare root, and often garden centers sell them bare root this time of year.
``How to plant a rose has not changed in 40 years,'' said Charles D. Turnbull Jr., a consulting rosarian in Norfolk. ``You cannot pop them in the ground and expect results.''
Here's how to plant a bare-root rose:
Prune any broken roots or canes.
Soak the rose overnight in a bucket of water before planting. You may want to add a teaspoon of Miracle Gro to the water and later pour that in the planting hole.
Dig a hole 18 inches wide and as deep.
Take the soil you remove and mix compost or peat moss with it, up to one-third of its volume.
In the bottom of the hole, put a cup of bone meal, a half cup of lime or half a dozen oyster shells. The late Fred Heutte always preferred oyster shells. This provides calcium for the plant roots. Make sure the roots do not touch anything but soil.
Using the soil you removed, make a cone in the planting hole. Set the plant on this cone so that the graft or bud union is 1 inch above the ground level.
Fill the hole half full with the remaining soil and then water. When the water soaks in, tamp the soil gently to eliminate air holes.
Fill up the rest of the hole, water again and add mulch.
There are several ways to protect the new rose from wind and drying out. One is to mound soil up around the plant 6 to 8 inches high. Remove it when growth starts. Another is to cover the plant loosely with Reemay, a spun-bond lightweight cloth that air and water penetrate.
Another, which I often use, is to cut the bottom out of a large plastic planter and place it around the rose. Then fill the can with pine straw.
Pruning roses requires as much care as planting and is difficult to explain without a demonstration. Many local gardening groups and centers offer rose-pruning workshops throughout the spring. (See calendar listings below.)
Virginia Beach consulting rosarian Arnie Eggen says: ``I prune by trying to out-guess the weather - when you think there won't be another hard freeze. When you get a hard freeze, you have to reprune.''
He pruned his last week and sprayed them afterward with dormant oil. Now he's waiting to see if his timing was right. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ROBERT STIFFLER
Arnie Eggen, a consulting rosarian with the Tidewater Rose Society,
tends a rose garden at his Virginia Beach home.
KEYWORDS: WEEDER'S DIGEST by CNB