Growing roses

Roses are a gardener’s first love. Read this simple guide about how to care for the pride of your garden, Roses.

Any garden is incomplete without roses. Roses have been the queen of every garden, ever since humans have set their eyes upon this passionate flower. Roses are also a must-have -flower for every garden, as caring for them is a child’s play. 

 

Growing roses
Rose garden
  • Common names: Gulab (hindi), Gulābi (kannada), Gōlāpa (Bengali)
  • Botanical name: Rosa sp.
  • Design ideas: Rose plants can be grown as ornamental shrubs, as climbers along walls and also as ground-cover and hedges.

Below is the simple yet complete guide on growing roses.

Note: Check out the organic rose mix available on our online store – the product has great reviews from our customers, and puts a fresh lease of life into your rose plants !

Plant features

  • Life cycle: Perennial
  • Height: 2-8 feet tall, in case of climbers it reaches up to 20 feet
  • Flowering season: spring, summer and fall
  • Flower colors: mostly seen in colours like pink, red, dark pink, white, yellow, orange, black etc. Also, nowadays blending of two or more colours are common giving striped or speckled petals.
  • Foliage: the leaves of rose plant are compound and alternate in nature; generally with 4-7 leaflets.
Growing roses
Common colors of roses

Growing care

  • Sunlight: full; 6-8 hours of direct exposure to sunlight.
    A few miniature roses can also be grown easily indoors in pots placed near a window sill with filtered sunlight.
  • Water: moderately, whenever the top soil turns dry. Keep the soil moist but not soggy, to avoid rot and fungal diseases due to over-watering.
  • Planting season: all year round

Fertilizing 

Roses should be fertilized once every 2 weeks during the warm growing season. Use organic fertilizers for the best results, like: 

Click on Pruning roses to read in detail about the care needed for healthy pruning of your roses.

Note: You can purchase Vital Pellets for Rose from our online store, for delivery anywhere in India – it’s a fantastic way to get nutrition to your rose plants.

Pests

Roses are prone to some pests like aphids, stem borers, spider mites, leaf-rolling sawfly, etc., with aphids and spider mites being the most common. Using jet-water is the most effective way to get rid of these pests. Use a hose to water them away whenever these are spotted on your roses. Also, follow these steps to avoid or treat pest infestations:

  • Regularly spray your beloved roses with organic pesticides such as Neem oil.
  • Handpick the leaves that look shrivelled or rolled over.
  • To fight mites, make a soap water solution and spray them on rose leaves once a week.
  • Spraying rosemary oil pesticide can prove helpful in removing mites without killing beneficial insects.

 Varieties

To grow gorgeous roses, it is important to choose the right varieties to plant keeping in mind the growing region and required conditions.Roses are found in a number of varieties. There are over 100 species of roses with over thousands of cultivars with most of its origin in Asia. Roses fall into the following categories:

Growing roses
Climber roses
  • Hybrid tea roses: these roses are very beautiful, often seen at flower shops and bouquets.
  • Floribunda: they are the most colourful of all varieties, with each bush having many blossoms.
  • Grandiflora: these are a cross between the hybrid tea and floribunda roses. They are quite tall with several roses clustered to a stem.
  • Climber roses: these can be trained to stretch vine-like along fences and walls
  • Miniature roses: intricate and tiny roses, perfect for planting in a container. 
  • Shrub and landscape roses: hardy and usually resistant to pests and diseases.

 

Propagation

Roses  are propagated by mainly two methods:

  • Stem-cutting which is carried out quite commonly for almost all varieties and
  • Grafting which is restricted to only some cultivars.

Roses are popularly planted by stem cuttings. The stem is ready to be cut when a bud eye (spine-shaped bump) appears on it. The stem cuttings are then soaked in water for about week before planting in the soil. 

Growing roses
Stages of rose cutting
  • Stick the stem cuttings about 2″ into the soil.
  • Keep it in the shade receiving filtered sunlight until new shoots have sprouted from the buds.
  • After about 4 to 6 weeks, plant the sprouted buds where they will receive a minimum of 5-6 hours of sunlight.
  • Feed your roses with plenty of organic matter.
  • Your roses may have its first bloom in less than 6 months from placing in the soil.

Let us know how those beautiful rose blooms are doing in your garden. 

Happy Gardening

rajiv8007@gmail.com'
February 28, 2017

Nice article!

I wanted to grow roses for the first time in 2016 and on visiting the various governmental as well as well known commercial nurseries in New Delhi, I found them to be grafted on to a certain root stock but i was searching for own root roses which was impossible to get other than the desi rose which is grown and sold by cutting method.

Lastly, i bought bud grafted 3 English Rose Plants this time and planted them in my society garden so that I can take a cutting from them in October 2017 as I only wish to grow them on their own roots so that management can be a lot easier as far as suckers growing at root stock are concerned.

Can you help me where I can buy cuttings of English Rose plants? I even tried rooting stem of various Roses bought from the road side florists of New Delhi (they are all Bangalore/Mangalore commercially grown roses) but they don’t root (this was even mentioned by florist but i wanted to check on my own).

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Rajiv

You must be logged in to post a comment.