Hi good morning it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm and today I want to take you through a quick
overview of the topic of growing roses in general - aimed at the beginner. It is a wet, rainy, early
spring day here where I live and that is a good time to start considering growing roses. The reason
why is because this is the time when it's great to get them in the ground there's lots of moisture
lots of time for them to establish before the main season it's also when in North America in March
April you'll find the most roses in the stores so your assortment your selection will be the highest
so today i want to go through the very basics overview of the topics i'm going
to talk about the roses themselves an overview of the plant and why you might want to grow it
number two i'm going to talk about its growing conditions and third i'm going to talk about
care instructions let's start with a quick bit on why you'd want to grow roses at all
roses are a wonderfully productive shrub unlike some other flowering shrubs in the landscape
roses at least modern roses can bloom over a long period of the year they bloom in many colors
they bloom in different heights there's different roses for different shapes and sizes
for your landscape they associate with other plants well you can put them into a
vegetable garden believe it or not an ornamental garden they contribute well they feed the bees
they're good for wildlife overall good habitat for for birds in the winter they have their hips
so they are productive productive plants and they have a bit of a reputation as something that's
difficult to grow but that's not true once you get to know the conditions that they're looking
for in the garden roses are a plant that have traveled with human civilization for long enough
they barely need an introduction but from a garden point of view i'm going to introduce
them as a northern temperate climate shrub or at least that's how their genetics started out
they've since been crossbred to have a few of the subtropical species in there so now you have their
distribution worldwide they are a shrub in the rose family no surprise there they share that
family with such hard-working plants as apples plums cherries strawberries and blackberries and
raspberries blackberries and raspberries share something special with roses insofar as they
have their thorns and they act as brambles that's one of the natural habits of roses in the wild is
that they have that thorny brambly scrambly kind of habit we have since domesticated them quite a
lot so we get some more well-behaved shrubby type forms in terms of the size and shape for
the garden that's the next thing i want to talk about and they break them into classes you can
have miniature roses that tend to be in the range of 18 inches to 24 inches sometimes over that but
that's the that's the general height fluorobundas which might average between two and three feet in
height maybe a little more in some cases hybrid tees might average more around three or four feet
grandifloras and shrubs are usually a little bit more than that in the four and five and six foot
range and then you have climbers and ramblers which can go to i'm going to say almost unlimited
heights but an average small climber might be in the range of eight to ten feet so between all of
those different sizes you can definitely find something that will fit your garden in terms of
flower form the one that you're most accustomed to seeing in the store might be that solitary
i'm going to call it a florist rose it has that sort of very distinctive high pointed bud that's
the hybrid tea form and it's a solitary form of course there are a ton of different forms of roses
and the most the most distinct to that is going to be something like the cluster flowering forms
the cluster flowering forms may have single rings of petals or they may have double petals
but look at something like the floribundas look at some of the wild roses i'm going to put up
some pictures here as well of things that have the cluster flowering form so and then there's a bunch
in between that have more petals less petals all sorts of different flower forms in the
rose family and i'll go into that in a separate video all right the other thing you need to know
is the color of those flowers they range the full spectrum except for blue so everything
from pink white yellow orange even into move and purple but not quite a true blue
so that's the one area where it isn't there but uh you know science may come up with it sooner or
of roses later the one that's missing they also have a lot of different patterns striped flowers
things that have different colored fronts and reverses of petals things that have eyes on
them so that's a newer innovation in breeding as roses that have a color patch in the middle that
that is darker than the rest of the petals so there's lots of different colors and forms that
you can choose from the garden one thing that roses are very well known for but it varies
quite a lot from variety to variety is their fragrance now with all these variations in roses
the one tip that i'll give you straight up front is to start referring to your roses
on a site that i know called help me find i'm going to link that below the video i'm
also going to put that up on the screen right now this is like a wikipedia for roses so if
you're trying to figure out if the rose that you're considering putting into your garden
has a great scent and what kind of scent it has this is the site that's going to tell you that
it's also going to talk about that height it's also going to talk about that bloom form it'll
talk about the bloom period most roses these days have a bloom period that goes most of the season
or all of the season although some of the roses especially the species roses and the old garden
roses may have a more limited bloom period you'll want to know that and if that's suitable for you
before you go ahead and make that purchase so take down this site it's going to be your gateway drug
into roses i promise you one final note that goes into the overview of roses themselves is that some
roses are grafted and some roses are grown on their own roots grafting is a production system
where a rootstock of a very vigorous variety of rose is grown and then a scion variety is grafted
into the top of that this is a similar production system that you'll see in fruit trees and orchard
fruit trees or even in sometimes production greenhouses for tomatoes and and peppers
it tries to impart some of the vigor and disease resistance of the root variety into the top stock
variety so that's one production system and that's been the dominant production system
through most of the 20th century more recently a lot of roses have been evaluated for strength on
their own roots and so that's the second group of roses is the own root roses it was getting a bit
windy out there so i've moved to a more sheltered location to talk about the growing conditions that
your roses will want so let's first talk about sun exposure because roses are a re-blooming plant and
because they bloom so profusely they need lots of energy if you want to have them perform their best
so the general recommendation for roses is to site them in full sun or only part shade full sun
generally means about six hours of uninterrupted sun in a day so that's not a whole ton
actually you know in a climate like mine in the summer the days get up to about 15 hours so
really it's only about a half day of sun so if you have morning sun strongly that's a little bit of
afternoon shade that's fine in a warmer climate i've heard from a lot of rose growers that a bit
of high dappled shade or afternoon shade actually helps with the performance of their roses because
it shields them from the hottest part of the day when they'll stress out due to moisture loss
so that's what you want to do for sun if you don't have a whole ton of spaces where you have lots of
sun there are some roses that have that tolerate part shade i've done a whole video on that
where i talk about roses that are more tolerant of shade i'll link that one up above as well so
you have some choices in that regard if you are looking to put your roses in a container
yes absolutely that's fine and that way you can take advantage of those areas of your yard
or your deck or your patio that get a little more sun and you can move your roses to suit
the needs of the plant now let's talk about soil in general roses are tolerant of a wide range of
different soils they'll go from a somewhat sandy soil all the way to somewhat clay soil but if you
look at that spectrum there from sandy to clay they generally like it a little bit more on the
clay-ish side or the heavier soil side the reason for this is because roses depend on a consistent
supply of moisture and a consistent supply of nutrients for that high performing flowering
and it's harder to get that in a sandy soil a sandy soil tends to drain from its nutrients
and its water a lot quicker than a clayish soil will so although roses will tolerate a wide range
of soils you can usually find that they'll perform a little bit better on that clayish end and if
you're growing them in a sandy soil you just have to be a little more on top of the fertilizing
and uh and feeding as well uh last thing i'll talk about in terms of sighting your roses is
in terms of support if you've chosen something like a rambler or a climber you'll have to do
something to support their growth generally i like a low fence or a trellis but wider rather than
taller roses going straight up tend to shoot up and then flower right at the very top whereas if
you can train them a little bit more horizontally you'll get more flowers along the entire length of
the stem they'll set out side shoots and you get roses all the way along the length of the stem if
you could train them a little more horizontally of course there are some roses that perform a little
bit better in a vertical fashion with some training and those ones are generally called
pillar roses so you can actually have a rose if if you look on rose resources and they say it's a
good subject for pillaring that's what it means is that it's one of those roses that if you put it up
something quite vertical it will still continue to send flowers along the entire length of the
rose just a quick return back to talking about container roses before i go on to the general care
instructions for roses containers are a natural limit on the reservoir of nutrients and moisture
for your rows and you want to make that reservoir as well and appropriately sized to the size of the
rose as you can possibly do and if you're even a little bit on the large side that's good so
choose the largest size container you can afford for that rose if you find that your container is
drying out quickly between waterings it's only going one or two days and then it's dry again
if you see signs of moisture stress that is that the inner leaves are starting to turn yellow uh
poor flowering performance that's a good sign that you've uh you've inappropriately sized your rose
to a too small of a container so larger is better in this case i have done a whole separate video
on container roses i'll link that one above as well but that's my final note on container
roses very doable but choose the largest size container that you that you can afford for the
space all right let's talk about uh feeding fertilizing pruning and all of that type stuff
because people get a little bit i'm gonna call it self-conscious that professional growers or rose
you know experts are going to look down on the way they take care of the roses roses are no different
than any other plant except for that one proviso that if you treat them a little bit better
they'll flower a little bit better for you because they have that ability to re-flower
strongly throughout the season so in that regard the one thing you can do to help that along is to
fertilize regularly starting early in the season i'm not talking uh heavy levels of fertilizer you
can look at the fertilizer package and start half the strength but do it frequently and then see how
your rose responds again i have done another video on fertilizing roses completely but the point on
this one here and the only thing i'm going to say is you will get your best performance from roses
if you fertilize them regularly throughout the early part of the growing season you can ease off
towards the back end of the growing season as you head into fall and winter you don't really need
to send a lot more nutrients into your roses but early on in the season regular fertilizing it will
help you out now in terms of watering i mentioned before that roses well they want both a good level
of fertilizer they want a good level of moisture so regular watering is a must if you have an uh
timed irrigation system that's probably the best thing so it's not relying on you to go out there
and and uh and figure on when your roses need water um so that's uh that's the second thing now
the one that trips a lot of people up is the idea of pruning roses and pruning roses is no different
than pruning any other shrub generally speaking your best time for pruning is early in the season
early spring late winter just as it's starting to think about coming into its flush of growth for
the season you at that time have the opportunity to reshape the size of the shrub bring it down
a little bit open it up but it's really nothing more than that a lot of roses don't really require
pruning early on so if you've planted a new rose in your landscape and it's the first year second
year third year in and it's still just putting on a framework you don't have to do anything with
that but when you see a rose that starts to jump up and have unproductive wood it's flowering right
at the top of the thing that's because you've neglected the pruning for some period of time it's
not fatal you can go back the next spring or even during the growing season up to a certain point
and take that down as you need to the only time i would avoid doing pruning i mean people think oh
early spring winter i've missed my window that's not true you can continue pruning throughout the
spring and summer up to a certain point where i would stop is if your climate gets very warm
and you suspect that pruning is going to stress out your plant then i wouldn't prune during that
time i also wouldn't prune going into the fall and winter if you are in a cold area if you're
in a cold winter climate that is likely to damage your roses over the winter then i would save that
pruning for the spring that way you'll see the winter damage at the same time you can
do your pruning in the late late winter and early spring but as for the rest of it general pruning
deadheading you can take care of that all the way through the spring all the way into the summer
but before i go i should talk a little bit about pests and diseases and i i think the first thing
i'll say is that a lot of people hold to a highest standard when it comes to pests and diseases on
their roses a little touch of black spot a little bit of powdery mildew some aphids a little bit
of leaf damage it isn't going to hurt your bros it isn't going to hurt its roses production and
you're not being judged on it i think that kind of judgy attitude that came with roses maybe it's an
offshoot of the rose exhibitions or something but you can be a perfectly successful rose gardener
just as i am and and still accept that there's some damage to your roses from pests and diseases
now there are certain limits to this and if you find that a large portion of your foliage
is being defoliated by powdery mildew or that japanese beetles have come in and and wiped out
your rose there are specific strategies for each of these pests but the the point here is not to
hold yourself to too high a standard i'm going to say one more thing on pests and diseases and it
kind of runs against the grain of how people have run their rose gardens for many many years people
have always felt oh i should have a rose garden where i put the perfect conditions i have the
perfect sunlight i have the perfect soil i have my irrigation system and so i just run my roses
alone in this garden the problem is that grouping together any kind of plant in a large group like
that makes them susceptible to big spikes in pest population and the natural predator populations
don't move in that quickly because there's not a lot of diversity of plants and flowers
so roses associate well in the rest of your garden they go beautifully into a vegetable garden
they go beautifully into any other ornamental type garden mixed gardens and what happens is the roses
do a great job of feeding the bees and and and flowering and fruiting and and doing things over
a long season well the other plants do a great job of bringing in a balanced population of beneficial
insects that help to wipe out the pests on your roses quite quickly so that's the thing i'll say
about pests and diseases as i say individual problems with pests and disease if you have
black spot or powdery mildew there are strategies for each of those things but the general rule is
tolerate a little bit of pest and disease pressure on your plants it's no big deal and
the second thing is try to encourage biodiversity in your garden all right that's all i have for
you today as an introduction to growing roses i hope i didn't scare you off with that last bit
if you have any questions please drop those down below the video and i'll see what i can do to help