Spring cleaning in the rose garden

Once your pruning is complete, rake up and bag the cuttings, leaves, and old mulch that remain on the ground or around the base of your bushes. This debris can be a source of insect eggs and disease spores.

After tidying up the rose beds, you’ll want to give those hungry bushes their first meal of the year. Roses are very greedy feeders and perform best when offered a healthy diet.

To make sure your roses get the 16 nutrients they need, it’s a good idea to have your soil tested. The results can help you pinpoint problems and add the necessary amendments.

There are many opinions on which fertilizing program is best, but in my garden I spread well-rotted horse manure and a basic 10-10-10 fertilizer right after pruning. Then, every other week during the growing season, I spray the leaves with a liquid fertilizer.

As a final step, sprinkle 1/4 cup of Epsom salts around each bush and “rough up” the bud unions with a wire brush to encourage basal breaks.

Then put your feet up and start counting the days until your roses look as healthy and glorious as those in any magazine.

PSSSST: Give your roses an extra treat by spreading some alfalfa pellets around each bush. They will thank you for it later.

Lynn Hunt, the Rose Whisperer, is one of nine garden writers who blog regularly at Diggin' It. She's an accredited horticultural judge and a Consulting Rosarian Emeritus for the American Rose Society. She has won dozens of awards for her writing in newspapers, magazines, and television. She grows roses and other plants in her garden on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

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