Planting Roses

Planting roses is an important process, for on it depends to a great extent the future health of the rose trees.  Planting requirements are effortless and important, with the first months being crucial to the survival of the plant.

Do not plant during frost

If it happens to be frosty when they arrive, delay planting your roses until the thaw.  Roses are usually so well packed that they will stand being out of the ground some days, and come to far less harm than if an attempt is made to plant them under bad conditions.  Sometimes they are partially frozen on the way, and when this is the case they must be most carefully treated.

Unpack in the cool

Many people with mistaken zeal, unpack and place them in some warm room or greenhouse, whereas they should be taken just as they are to some outhouse just free from frost, or any place where they can thaw gradually.  Nothing must be done to make them tender, on the contrary, they must be hardened if they are ever to face the rough weather they must inevitably undergo before spring arrives.

It is rarely, however, that much hard weather comes before Christmas, so that generally they can be planted out at once.

Before taking the roses to their beds you should have made a small plan of just how you propose to plant them.  If for a formal or landscape effect this has no doubt been all arranged beforehand to suit your taste.

If you are planting them in the ordinary form of a rose bed it is a very simple matter to arrange.

Your rose bed should be three feet wide for Hybrid Teas and Teas.  For Hybrid Perpetuals and very strong growers four feet is better.  You plant your roses ten inches from the edge of the bed and eighteen inches apart, and try not to plant them exactly opposite to one another, "stagger" them.

Sometimes rose roots are injured in the shipment, in which case it will be necessary to cut off the broken ends.  A good pair of pruning shears and a sharp knife are the two best implements for this work.  Cuts should be sharp and clean and the roots should be cut off above the break.  It will only take a minute to examine each plant before it is actually set and to cut off broken roots and any suckers in which growth may have started.

Weed and clear the area before planting roses, then there is less likelihood of rose diseases and rose pests destroying the rose trees.  The best season for planting roses as a rule is autumn (October or November), but for tender rose varieties, and in exposed positions, spring is very occasionally better.