Hi, it's Jason at Fraser Valley Rose farm again, and I was out here digging some holes anyway
So I thought I might take the opportunity
to try to dispel a Rose myth that
That I think is out there
It's how to plant your roses, and I guess the expression kind of goes like this well
"Why plant a twenty dollar rose in a 50 cent hole" and
it's to encourage gardeners to think okay
I've got to dig a big hole and put in bone meal and blood meal and alfalfa meal and bat guano and
Compost and manure and all sorts of other stuff to try to improve this big hole for this rose
So that it will have a way better chance of surviving - and that's just not the case
And I'll show you a couple of holes here. I'm going to show you why it isn't
true in my view
Okay here I am in my garden
I have over here my big expensive hole for the simulation and over here my little cheap hole
so
the big expensive hole one thing that's gonna say about it first of all is I'll take a rose here from my greenhouse and
Try to put that down there and what you'll see
Is that that
Is way too deep or if what I do is to
Pack it with a bunch of soil and bring it up to this level
It's gonna be rocking around in there. It's not gonna be sitting on a solid base of
Firm native soil, it's going to be rocking around so when you get wind or that kind of thing
That's a problem so the next thing I'm gonna do here
if I can do this one-handed
So I'm actually going to go ahead
And
put some good organic soil in here
So this is just some bagged soil actually a good organic soil that I keep around the nursery here for potting soil on that
And
Putting it in
And first question, I'm gonna ask is
Can you tell the difference? I
sure can and
So can the roots of your plant actually
What's inside there is gonna serve like a big container the roots are gonna grow easily through that soil,
establish well in that soil, but it's they're gonna basically stop at the edge, so
around this outer edge wherever there's a margin between one type of soil and another type of soil both roots and
moisture have a hard time penetrating that barrier, so
Even as water comes in from rain
It's going to percolate down and fill up this soil here
But when it tries to drain out into what is in my case kind of a heavy silty soil
It's actually gonna pause and wait a long time in here
Which over the winter is a recipe for root death?
Excuse me while I wait for an airplane to go by
So the next thing I'll say is
That when you get into the winter and you have wind loads or snow loads
And if the roots haven't established into the native soil what will happen is your rose is going to tend
under the weight of
wind or snow
If the roots haven't established beyond that hole to tip or break or suffer root damage
now I'm going to show you my
Little cheap hole with basically native soil. I'll place my rose in there
Dropping down to level. It's actually pretty close to a good level for planting and
It's nice and firm against the base of the hole the native soil is firm second thing going to say is I'm going to backfill
Basically just with the native soil
What I want to do is I want to encourage this rose to establish itself
Firmly into the native soil before it has to deal with winter winds or snow load or that kind of thing so
that's the point is to get it well established firmly into native soil and
I'm a while. I'm doing this throw in something like bone meal or
That kind of thing just to help it to get a good start
But what I'll do afterwards is I will mulch and I will top dress with fertilizer so that's fine
You can get all your fertilizer you need into there that way. I'll say one other thing and it's about
organics and here. I'm not talking big "O" Organic like trademark
"we restrict inputs so that we can charge you more for organic tomatoes or organic peppers"
I'm talking organic as in organic matter
Which is anything that came from plants or living material before it so here. I am talking about peat and
Manure and compost and that kind of thing is that as this stuff begins to break down
Which it does. in it's final
Stable
State is called humus
but it's much smaller and so what you end up with is void being built around the
Here so once again it detracts from the stability of your rose
so I would not choose this hole I would choose this hole I
Would backfill with basically my native soil, which is fine. It's a it's reasonably
fertile and it drains well
And so that's fine for siting a rose and I would dispense with the with the myth don't plant your $20.00 rose in
A 50 cent hole I think the 50 cent hole is more worth your money