Good morning, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm today
I want to talk to you about how to plant your own-root roses in the ground and establish those in your garden
And I promise we will get shovels in the ground in just a moment here
But first I want to explain why I've made a separate video talking about own root roses versus grafted roses
And if you don't know the difference between those two production systems, I've made a video on the topic
I'll link it up above here, but it's the only part that's important for this stage
The planting stage is that you know that grafted roses
Tend to be grafted onto a very vigorous root stock and have a very large crown which means they can establish
Quite quickly in the garden own root roses can vary quite a lot in their vigor
And so I usually try to get only roses put in in as large a size as I can find this one here. I just
Purchased from another supplier and although it's a fairly respectable size to arrive in the mail
I wouldn't feel good about putting this right into the ground
I don't think that it would have enough time to establish a good root system before
More severe weather comes in if you look behind me here. You'll see the blueberries
plants are starting to change color go red a little bit which means that fall is here winter is coming on and
these then once that cold hits the root development will basically
Stop on my plants. So I don't want to risk it with this here. I would feel much better
Planting this up potting it on to a larger pot size. So let me show you
This is an own root Rose that I've grown on into a gallon size and at this point with a big
Root system like that. I would feel fairly good putting that into the ground this time of year or any time of year
Even better
In a larger pot like this one here
So that's the first thing I'll talk to you about with the own root roses
Is that if you get them in a smaller size it may pay to have a potting up step
Grow them on fill them up in a larger pot before you put them in the ground. Okay. Let's get to planting
Okay
I'm in the planting location now
And I thought I would break up the topic of how to plant your own root rose into four basic questions
The first one of which is how do you prepare the Rose itself?
The second is how large of a hole a planting hole
Do you want to dig for your rose? The third one is what else goes into it?
What else do you amend it with? And the fourth one is how deep should you plant the crown of your rose?
So I'll take them all in order here and clearly I have some opinions on these things
I'd rather not treat this as an "I'm right they're wrong" kind of a thing but rather open a discussion with you about it
I'll give you my opinions
You can look up the rest and we can talk about it in the in the comments of the video
So the first one is relatively uncontroversial
unlike grafted roses where the instruction is
Usually that you're getting this dormant bare root rose
And now you should soak it. This one comes to you active in active growth with active roots
And so the only instruction I'm going to give you in preparing it for
Planting is that you should pull off some of this loose potting soil
which I really don't want to make up a major component of
The planting hole - the potting soil will tend to break down over time
It's made out of in my case a composted wood bark and wood chips
So I don't want that unstable organic component in my planting hole
The other thing is I want to break up the roots across the bottom here
I want to give them I want to let them start to wander there
Now if you find that you get one that is relatively root bound if you've bought it in a pot
It's relatively root bound all of the sort of yellowish roots are sort of wound around the outside of the pot
You may take your your pruners or a knife and just slash down the side in various places
It sounds damaging but what it really will do is allow some of those roots to
Regenerate and start to explore which is what you want them to do. Once they get into the soil
The second topic is how large of a hole do you want to plant and for me?
I have a different opinion on this than many people who talk about how to plant a rose
I view it as I only want a hole that's just barely larger than the pot itself
so I'll show you in the footage that I do here that I'm just doing just
Slightly larger than a one gallon pot
I take the need of plants soil the soil out and set it aside and they use that to backfill
But I don't want too large of a hole. Why is that?
well, one of the issues in this area here because we get some harsh winds from the south in the summer and from the east
in the winter
I get a bit of wind rock and so having a big planting hole with a bunch of loose soil around it
Isn't firm enough to support my plants
What I really want my plants to do is to get their roots and start
Establishing into the native soil near by the firm native soil nearby so they can start to support themselves as quickly as possible
That's my goal so I don't
part of my answer goes to the next question of what else do you want to put into that planting hole and I hear all
Sorts of recipes. I hear people talking about putting in alfalfa
manure compost bone meal blood meal
every organic amendment you could possibly think of
Some that I haven't even thought of - all going into that planting hole and for me
I don't want to put a bunch of other stuff in the planting hole. That's the answer for my next question
So it does answer why I don't need to dig a big planting hole because I don't need to mix all that soil
With a bunch of organic amendments to go back down into that hole. I just want enough room to fit the rows
That's what the hole is for now going on to the next topic
Which is why don't I want to put a whole bunch of other amendments in there. So let's take this logically
Let's take it, you know from an objective point of view
What is it that you could add at the time of planting that you couldn't later add as a top dress?
Okay. So top dress meaning I could add manure to the top of the soil later I could add
compost leafmold
Alfalfa any kind of a more organic amendment or inorganic amendment any of the fertilizers I can add to the top of the soil at
A later time and it will work its way back down through the profile of the soil. So
why would it be important that I add it to the
plant at the time of planting
Then the question becomes well
Why wouldn't I want to plant it in there at the time of planting and it goes back to that answer of?
Firmness and stability of the rose. I want those roots to go searching. I want them to go out and start looking for food
looking for water start establishing into the native soil and getting themselves firm in the planting hole if they're dug into
Sort of an artificial pot of loose soil in the ground that's very rich with a bunch of amendments
There's a couple of risks there one. You could have amended it too. Heavily. It's a bit hot
You've put in too much fertilizer, and now you burn the root system as it's trying to establish the second thing
Is that maybe the roots will just be satisfied to stay in that one little spot feeding on that rich?
Artificially amended soil and won't go searching down into the soil profile and won't
Establish those those roots for anchoring which is one of the primary
purposes of a root system
So that's the reason why I don't want to add a whole bunch of stuff to the planting hole and honestly
I don't see the risk because even if I miss something I can always add it back again later
So I like to establish my roots
Relatively lean with not a lot of extra material in there
You know
One last note on this is that if you add a whole bunch of organic stuff into that planting hole at the time of planting
Well, as I said about the the potting soil, that's just a holding material
It will shrink down and disappear over time. All organic matter does
so if you've left a whole bunch of organic matter if it makes them up a major component of your planting Hall that stuff will
Begin to disappear and disintegrate over time and you'll be left with the plant that rocks around inside this hole because there's not a lot
Of because the soil has shrunk away from it a little bit so it's left some voids in the soil
so that's my answer to those two questions of how big a planting hole you want to dig and how
and what else you'd like to add to the planting hole the final question that
People sometimes debate is the question of how deep you should plant this. So this is basically the
Crown of the plant the place where it came out of the ground. Okay is right around here
Okay for me, that's the soil level
That's how I want to plant it. So some people actually
Recommend that you bury it a lot deeper
so going up from this crown here go up by either three or five or six inches and
Basically, it covers the crown of that plant with layer of soil
So why do they recommend that?
typically
It has a lot to do with them saying it put it protects the rose a little bit better from winter weather or freezing
It's usually a hardiness thing
I've heard other explanations as well like better support my reason for wanting to go only at the crown there
It's for me. It seems like the most natural place to plant a
Rose, it's what I do with my trees. It's what I do with my other shrubs
It's what I do with my perennials. I want the crown right at the soil level where I can see it
The crown is actually a pretty vulnerable spot on your on all of your plants but roses particularly
It's a whether it's a grafted rose or whether it's a known root rose crown rot is one of the risks to your plant
So if you bury it low down, you can't see it. It's a down there. It's more exposed more
Continually to moisture and soil organisms. Whereas if it's up at the soil level. I can see it. I can inspect it
I can check the condition of my rose and I just tend to feel it's the most natural place to plant a rose
So again, we can debate that
Okay, that covers my four questions on how to plant a known root Rose
And I thank you for watching if you have any questions, but particularly if you wanted to beat some of these things
That's what I find
These videos are really useful for us that people who know a lot about
roses can come in leave their opinions in the comments below the video and we can have a good solid debate about it and maybe
Educate everybody along the way. Thanks so much for watching