A Guide To Growing Roses For Beginners

Give your Roses a Head Start – Growing Roses for Beginners

If you have chosen a rose, the first hurdle to a growing season has already been cleared. For everything else, step-by-step guidelines leads to a growing roses success.

It starts with an excellent location, the best plant quality and how to plant your roses.

With many rose nurseries all over the country and countless web resources, it is easy to get unlimited information for the rose novice.

However, whether you prefer an individual consultation, you should contact a regional specialist or an expert of the American Rose Society. You will receive professional advice on choosing the right rose variety and on the appropriate location in the garden.

Last but not least, the color selection becomes important. Therefore, you should “personally” take a look at the varieties available, because the illustrations in the catalogs rarely match the color reality.

Where Roses Flourish Well

Before you decide to buy roses, you should know the garden conditions, then choose the suitable type of rose.

The following things are of particular importance:

1. Roses prefer a bright and nicely aerated location. Choose a site with at least 6 hours full sunlight a day. Wet leaves dry fast at a breezy location and keep the occurrence of Powdery Mildew and Rust on Roses to a minimum.
2. The flowers favor a well-drained sandy-loamy soil with a  near-neutral pH (6.5 would be perfect). 
3. If you do not have the best soil for roses, do not worry about it: roses get along well with poor soil with some suitable measures.

A testing kit for your soil should be part of your gardening equipment.

How to Plant Roses Properly

1. Prune the Shoots and Roots

Prune the aerial parts of the plants down to 6-7.5 inches and remove only damaged or dry root-parts.

Prune overlong root-parts too. 

Don't overdo it; less is more in this case.

2. Watering

Bare root roses loose water and get dry during their storage in garden centers.

That shouldn't get you in trouble, soak the plants 12-24 hours deep in a water bath before planting them.

3. Planting the Roses

All garden roses do have a bulging area between the brown roots and green shoots.

This bud union must be located about 2 inches deep in the soil after planting, because of frost matters.

4. Backfill the Plant Hole

Maybe you need some help to hold the plant in the right place, while back-filling the plant hole with soil.

Take care not to damage the roots! If you have poor native soil, work in some organic soil amendment.

Add mulch at the top, but keep it away from the rose canes to avoid rotting.

5. Soak with Water

Adjust and compress the soil in a way that a ring-shaped basin will form.

That pouring-basin will assure the water going directly to the roots.

Water your plants every day to help the feeder-roots to grow out quickly, even during rainy weather.

6. Mounding

Mound garden soil, that only the tops of the shoots can be seen.

That will protect the young shoots from frost, wind and sun.

As the new-shoots will be as long as about 4 inches, remove the mounding.

Growing roses for beginners is pretty easy, just stick to the guide and you will soon enjoy the most beautiful flowers in your garden.

Growing Roses for Beginners Additional Tips

This is a beginners guide to growing bare root roses. Find additional tips on further pages.

Growing Roses in Containers

Work With Bare Root Roses