How to correctly prune your rose bushes

Photography by Dawn Gagnon

Roses are a beautiful addition to any garden but they do require some maintenance to keep them looking beautiful. Proper pruning and dead heading your roses is one part of the maintenance that must be done every season.

1. Prune your rose in early spring and once all danger of frost has past.

2. Make sure you have clean, sharp by-pass pruners and thick gloves. Some roses like the Joseph Coat are extremely thorny and can really cause a lot of damage to your hands and arms.

3. During the growing season, prune roses by looking for the first set of five leaves where you'll see a leaf bud. Prune just above this bud at a 45 degree angle that will assure the new growth will grow outward from the plant and not inward. This can be done as you dead head your roses.

4. Remove all dead and dying wood and any spindly canes that are less than the diameter of a pencil. Also look for sucker growth. These are canes that shoot out from the base of your plant under the main bud union. The main bud union is where all the main canes of the rose bush emerge from. Anything growing and shooting out from under this is a sucker and should be removed completely.

5. If you have a problem with cane borers, it is suggested that you can cover fresh pruning cuts with basic white school glue to prevent infestation.

6. Once roses go dormant for the year and have been exposed to several hard frosts, cut the rose down to one third of its original size and only leave three to four healthy canes for best results. Add a thick layer of fresh mulch.

Spring Hill Roses Grand Opening

Joseph's Coat Rose

If you love the convenience of ordering plants online then you may want to consider adding Spring Hill Nursery to you list of possible gardening resources. *Spring Hill Nursery has a long history beginning in 1849 in North Dayton, Ohio by its founder Peter Bohlender. Spring Hill Nursery was originally a wholesale operation, but as the years advanced became a mail order nursery.

If you live in South Carolina and enjoy the beauty of roses, consider a trip this May to Orangeburg, SC and enjoy the *Edisto Memorial Gardens Rose Festival. It will inspire you to try a few roses in your garden. If you are chomping at the bit to get into your garden and plant some beautiful roses, you're in luck.

The grand opening of **Spring Hill Roses online website is currently running a sale on some of the most popular and beautiful roses seen anywhere. Spring Hill roses are shipped bareroot and ready to be planted with simple instructions to insure that your rose performs to your expectations. One rose in particular to take note of is the ***Twilight Zone rose with is stunning showcasing a deep purple blossom with a lemon and clove scent.

In addition to offering competitive prices and a wide selection of some of the most exotic and beautiful roses in the world, the ****Spring Hill Nursery site also can supply you with gardening needs like fertilizers, and gardening gadgets galore. Spring Hill offers a free catalog so you can peruse at your leisure and a newsletter for those who like to receive exclusive deals and offers.

*Edisto Memorial Gardens Rose Festival
**Spring Hill Roses
***Twilight Zone Rose
****Spring Hill Nursery

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Top three flowering plants for your southern garden

The Knockout rose, a great choice for disease resistance

South Carolina has a long growing season, and Spring starts off with a burst of color in most landscapes. Cherry trees, Bradford Pears, Dogwoods, and Azaleas dominate most gardens in the south in  early Spring. There is one flower that is quite a challenge in most gardens, even in the south, and  that is roses. High temperatures, drought, and  humid nights, often prove to be the enemy when growing roses. Finding one that is a good fit for your yard is important. The Knockout rose may the one of the best to meet this challenge.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: The Knock out rose

Encore Azaleas, a bloom for all seasons

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 Encore Azaleas are the perfect new solution for more blooms throughout the season. Sold in most gardening centers, it is more cold tolerant, adaptable to its environment and blooms up to nine months a year. This is a great improvement over the regular Azalea which only blooms three weeks out of the entire year.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Encore Azaleas, a bloom for all seasons - Columbia home and living | Examiner.com 

Lantana

Image via Wikipedia

 Lantana are beautiful and great for covering bare spots in any garden setting. They have vivid colors and can tolerate harsh growing conditions often seen in the south. Heat, and drought do not seem to affect this plant and they have a pungent aroma to boot. Bright colors of yellow, orange and red, among others will set your garden off and once they are planted, very little worry is in order. They will come back year after year and do their part in your garden to make it lovely. Butterflies will love this addition to your yard as well.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Great plants for the novice southern gardener - Columbia home and living | Examiner.com

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The Knockout rose, a great choice for disease resistance

South Carolina has a long growing season, and Spring starts off with a burst of color in most landscapes. Cherry trees, Bradford Pears, Dogwoods, and Azaleas dominate most gardens in the south in  early Spring. There is one flower that is quite a challenge in most gardens, even in the south, and  that is roses. High temperatures, drought, and  humid nights, often prove to be the enemy when growing roses. Finding one that is a good fit for your yard is important. The Knockout rose may the one of the best to meet this challenge.

Knockout roses can be purchased from a variety of places, your local garden center, and bare root from reputable companies like Jackson and Perkins online. There are single blooming and double blooming varieties that will no doubt reward you with proper care. They typically grow fast, bloom heavy from Spring through late Summer and are disease resistant and pest tolerant. They do get aphids, but if they are healthy, are not affected by them like some more delicate variety of roses may be. Blasting aphids with a strong surge of water usually keeps them in check.

Knockout roses are great in areas where disease is prevalent,  especially to one of the worst culprits, blackspot. While no rose is entirely immune to disease,  however, Knockout roses seem to fair better than most. The key to helping any rose in its resistance to pests and disease is to ensure that they remain strong and healthy.

Knockout roses do well if planted in full sun, in the southern states, it is ok if they have some afternoon relief from the sun. 6 hours of full morning sun is ideal. Water roses on a regular basis, but to avoid disease problems, water by hose early in the day so that roses have time to dry. Roses watered in the evening stay damp overnight and this encourages disease coupled with warm night temperatures.

Knockout roses respond well to some shaping and pruning in the winter, removing dead growth and regularly dead heading spent blossoms will keep Knockouts looking their best. Slow release feeding, organic compost and fish meal worked into the base of the plant will yield beautiful strong plants. Liquid fertilizer that can be dispersed during watering will have promising results and help these fast growing heavy bloomers do their job. If you are planning on any one rose for your garden, Knock out rose will not disappoint you.

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