How To Grow And Care For Rose Plant: Gardening Tips & Advice

This ultimate guide on how to grow rose and its care guide will help you to know sunlight, watering, fertilizers, propagation, pruning, pest and disease management. Rose is an alluring woody perennial flowering that gardeners love to have in their garden.

But to get heavy blooming on rose plant, or save it from dying, keep it healthy and growing you need to know these points in mind that will help you to care for your rose plant.

Introduction

In the world there are over 300 species of rose and tens of thousands of cultivars that are famous for their plant size, flower shape, colour, and fragrance. However, beauty comes with cost and that’s why rose plant has sharp thorns on their stem for protection.

If you will read my article on rose farming, then you will be surprised to know about various cultivars available in the market.

One of the most interesting thing that I feel about growing roses is the freedom to graft different varieties or to propagate roses from cuttings. All these process are quite easy and practicing them during specific time period can give you awesome results.

How To Grow Rose?

Growing roses mainly depends on season and variety for survival. Suppose you are growing a variety of rose that is suitable for colder climate will face difficulty in surviving during harsh summer of tropical climate. Hence knowing about local cultivar is very necessary for the survival.

Growing Season

You can easily start growing roses where climate is relatively cool with temperature ranging from 15 to 25^o Celsius. Avoid growing roses in regions with high humidity as it can promote fungal growth that can harm your plant. Generally USDA plant hardiness zones 7, 8, 9, and 10 are suitable for roses.

Potting Mix For Rose

Well drained, fertile, loamy soil with good moisture holding capacity with 6 to 6.5 pH is ideal for rose plant. If you do not have ideal soil then you can prepare potting mix by following this formula:

Now take 40% garden soil + 20% river sand + 40% well rotten organic manure such as cow dung or vermicompost in the pot that has drainage holes in the bottom. Rose plant is a heavy feeder and requires good amount of fertilizers to grow well.

You can also use coco peat instead of river sand if your garden soil is too much sandy. Adding two to four handful of Neem cake fertilizer in this potting mix can be a good choice.

How & When To Propagate Rose?

Common methods by which you can propagate your rose plants are cutting, grafting, budding, layering, etc. I have already shared an article on propagating rose from cuttings that you can check out in my website.

You can propagate rose any time during the year but avoid plantation or propagation during harsh summer or winters. Moreover soil used for plantation should not be water-logged or completely dry.

Rose Plant Care Guide

Sunlight

Rose plant requires plenty of sunlight and good aeration to grow well. Select a spot where your rose plant can receive at least 6 hours of direct sunlight with good aeration. But during harsh hot climate of tropics you can place the pot under partial shade sunlight.

Watering

Watering rose depends on condition of the soil media and climate. Only apply water when the top layer of the potting mix or soil media is dry. Apply water around the base of the plant and you can also sprinkle water on foliage during hot dry summers.

Both excess and under watering can result in poor performance of rose plant. Avoid waterlogging at any cost to save your plant from fungal diseases. Newly planted rose requires large amount of water as compared to well established plants.

Pruning & Dormancy

During winters rose plant goes under rest or dormancy. At this time when rose plant slows down its growth or starts shedding its leaves, stop applying any kind of fertilizers with the onset of winters.

To promote the growth of new branches and flowering you will have to prune the branches during late winters or early spring. But one week before pruning apply 2 grams of Mustard cake fertilizer and 3 to 4 granules of DAP around the base per rose plant.

Instead of inorganic fertilizers you can also use banana peel or onion peel fertilizer. I also prefer spraying organic fungicide and waste decomposer two days before pruning of roses.

At the day of pruning, cut out branches to half of their length. Take out all the weak and diseased branches. Sprinkle water over branches for several days after pruning of branches.

Fertilizers

There are of of discussions related to fertilizing rose plant as it is a heavy feeder. But I will tell you few simple guidelines that you can follow easily. 15 days after pruning you can start adding fertilizer to your plant.

You can either use NPK (20:20:20) 2 grams in 1 litres of water and micronutrients 1 grams in 1 litres of water once monthly or you can use organic substitute like 3 to 4 handful of vermicompost and onion or banana peel fertilizer once after every 14 days.

If you are deeply in love with rose plant then I will surely advice you to prepare this rose fertilizer mix.

Take 1 Kg Bone-meal, 1 Kg Neem cake fertilizer, 250 grams of DAP, Potash, Super phosphate, Zinc sulphate, Magnesium Sulphide, NPK, Mustard Cake Dust, and 100 grams of Plaster of Paris and mix them very well to prepare rose fertilizer mix.

Once after every 14 days, dig the soil around the base of the plant and apply one table spoon of this rose fertilizer mix to promote good growth.

Pests & Diseases

Pests like thrips, aphids, termites, mites, whiteflies can infest and damage your rose plant. You can spray neem oil once in every month and have yellow sticky traps around to prevent your plant from these pests.

Most common diseases that can affect your plant are die back, powdery mildew, black spot, and root rot. In case of die back prune out affected branches and apply chaubatia paste in the pruned area.

For treating fungal diseases you can use our sponsered product: SAAF Fungicide

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