Peninsular Rose Club

Planting Roses

by Ielean Spanos

When to Plant:
The time to plant or move roses is when they are dormant—unfortunately this winter our plants have never settled down to sleep, but have kept on blooming! The objective is to handle the roses when there is the least disruption to their growth. In our area, this could be any time from late November to mid–February. If you live where the ground freezes, it is better to wait until early spring when the soil has had a chance to thaw.

Bareroot Roses:
If you are planting bare-root roses, you'll want to plant them as quickly as you can after receiving them. If you must store them, soak the roots in water for 4 hours, then keep the plant in an open plastic bag in a cool dark place, misting with water occasionally. If you are storing them for more than 2 weeks, pot temporarily in a container of potting soil or damp sawdust, keeping them moist and protected from weather.

Before planting, soak the roots in water overnight. Some people will add Vitamin B1 or rooting hormones to the water—if you do, keep the leftover water to pour on the roses once planted.

Cut off any dead or broken roots. Try to handle the roots gently—the tiny hair-like rootlet tips are where all of the action is when it comes to drawing water and nutrients from the soil.

Planting Container Roses:
Try to keep a good portion of the soil with the root ball. Gently loosen the roots around the outside of the root ball, trying to break as few roots as possible. Wounds to the root system are the entry point for diseases like crown gall (Agrobacterium tumefaciens).

Pruning Before Planting:
Prune the canes back hard—except for climbers—to about 4 inches, just above an outward-facing bud. Container roses you can leave a bit longer. We don't want leaves and transpiration until the root tips have regenerated and established a feeding system for the plant. Use sharp pruners to make a clean cut, and disinfect the pruner blades often in water and alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to prevent disease transmission.

Prepare the site:
Pull all the weeds and sweep up any debris, especially rose leaves, from the surrounding area, in order to remove the over-wintering fungal disease spores. Choose a site that gets at least 5 hours of sun a day—even roses advertised as shade tolerant won't thrive unless they get some direct sun.

Dig a good, big hole:
With clay soil, roses and other plants will have a hard time establishing good roots. Dig as big a hole as you can, and break up the clay at the bottom to promote better drainage. Add coarse sand to the bottom of the hole if drainage is a real problem. The hole should be wide enough that the rose's roots can fit in without bending or folding.

Replanting Syndrome:
Another reason to dig a large hole, especially when replacing one rose with another, is that roses can fail to thrive in soil that other roses have been grown in. Since it is not practical to establish new beds with every replanting, our alternative is to remove a wheelbarrow full of soil and replace it with compost. The old soil (clay and all) goes into the compost bin to form the basis of the compost we'll use 2–3 years from now—by which time most of the pathogens should have been rendered harmless.

Fertilize:
We add a couple of generous handfuls of Complete Organic Fertilizer into the compost mix, which will release nutrients slowly for several years (especially phosphate and calcium, which are usually deficient in our soils). We mix the fertilizer evenly throughout the soil, rather than placing a handful directly under the rose—we want to encourage the new roots to spread out and provide a stable base for the plant.

Planting:
Fill the hole partway with compost &/or manure and topsoil mixed, and all the while whisper positive thoughts about how happy your roses' roots will be. Make a mound of compost mix in the centre of the hole, to spread the roots over. This should be tall enough that the union (graft) is just above ground level when the rose is placed on the mound. Now fill the hole in about 3/4 of the way. Shake the rose as you do this, to settle the dirt around the roots, gently pressing the compost mix into place.

Water and Mulch:
Water the new rose slowly to settle the soil around the roots, and check that the union hasn't settled below the surface. Fill the hole up the rest of the way and water gently again. Gardeners in some climates arrange the dirt to make a "dish" around the rose to collect rainwater—this is a good idea for the summer, but not for our rainy winters, when drainage is more important than funneling more water to the roots.

Mound a mulch of compost or leaves over the plant to cover the union, leaving only about 2" of the stems showing. This will help protect the rose from freezing, wind dehydration and storm damage. We also pile the evergreen branches left over from Christmas on both our established and newly planted roses for a convenient wind– and frost–break.

Waking up:
In early Spring, carefully remove the mulch and windbreaks, trying not to knock off the developing buds. Don't apply nitrogen fertilizers until the plants have broken dormancy and have established about 2 inches of growth.
Ielean's Rule of Two
Two People

It's easier to plant with two people (especially if one of them really likes digging holes). One person can hold the rose in place and tamp the dirt around the roots while the other gently shovels in the compost mix.

Two Wheelbarrows

It's also easier if you have two wheelbarrows - one for the old dirt coming out of the hole, and one with your fresh compost mix.

Two Dollar Holes

Don't put a ten dollar rose in a two dollar hole! The effort you make now to prepare the soil for the root system of your new rose can make all the difference to its health. This is your one and only chance to amend the soil under the rose, so do it right.

The Planting Tragedy of ‘89:

Our first really large order of about 40 bare-root roses arrived in November of 1989, a month of torrential rains. The poor things got planted in pure, gooey mud, which promptly froze solid in one of the longest sustained cold snaps we've seen in Victoria. We mounded the roses with straw and covered them with plastic buckets, all the while lamenting that this would be the shortest-lived rose garden ever. In the spring, we uncovered the roses—they were covered with mould which had to be hosed off—and to our amazement, every one of them burst into bloom! We should have had more faith in our friends to pull through.

When planting trees
do not dig deeply and put compost directly beneath the root ball—instead, leave a central mound of native soil to support and spread the roots, and put your compost on top of the spread-out roots. The reason is that as compost decomposes, it shrinks—and if placed directly under the tree, this will allow it to settle, which can cause trunk damage, breakage or instability. I can't see this as being a problem for rose bushes, but it is something to keep in mind for larger plants.

Clay
is rich in minerals, and makes a good addition to your compost in modest quantities. The secret is that the organic humic acid in the compost keeps the clay particles from clumping together, and all the biological activity loosens the bonds between the minerals and the clay, making the nutrients available for plants.

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