Winter Rose Care

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Winter has set in with its chillness blanketing your garden and it is time to protect your beautiful roses from the biting winter winds. Rose care is essential to keep your plant alive and blooming all through the year.

Despite the fact that the fashionable or shrub roses have occupied more space in today's garden, the conventional hybrid tea roses are still popular in beautifying the gardens.

The shrub rose varieties require less attention when compared to the tea roses. This can be one of the reasons for the popularity of the shrub roses.

Shrub Roses are less fussy and are mostly hardy to the climatic changes. They continue to thrive in winter with less attention. Since they are winter hardy they just require a little or no mulching to safeguard them from the cold weather. However good soil moisture is required for winter. Hence water the plants and remove dead or diseased canes.

Shrub roses generally require less pruning during fall or spring.

Hybrid tea roses are easy victims of winter. Their roots and canes are not winter hardy. Providing sanitation is the first step in winter care for tea roses. Remove all diseased leaves from the plant and the soil. Do not compost them and treat them as trash.

Mulching becomes a necessity for tea roses that caters for a good growth the following year. Mulching tea roses involves the protection for the graft union found below the soil level. If the plant is dead at this point then it stops blooming. You can protect the graft with a mound that is about six to eight inches poured over the center of the plant in a conical shape.

The mound should not be collected from the soil around the plant, which will damage the roots of the plant. The soil for the mound can be gathered from another part of the garden. The mulching soil can be removed in the spring at the period before the growth begins.

Pruning is also an essential winter care for roses. The tall rose canes have to be pruned back to about 24". Pruning has to be done towards the end of the winter season and the beginning of the spring season after the harsh wintry chillness has drifted.

Roses can also be sheltered with frost cloth or foam enclosures. These are used as protection or a cover for the cut back roses. So provide all the protection and care for your roses during winter for ensuring fresh blossoms with the dawn of the spring.