This depends on you and how good you want your roses to look and perform, the main thing is to make sure your roses are kept well fed and this will help greatly in keeping disease problems at bay or to a minimum level. Regular spraying of the foliage in summer months before you see problems will definitely lead to improved performance and much cleaner and healthier growth. Amateur gardeners now have the opportunity to benefit from the simple power of potassium phosphite, a nature-identical plant food. For several years now, it has been widely used by professional growers and the results have prompted recommendations from many of the leading members of the rose breeding and growing industry.

The most important thing when caring for roses is to feed them at least twice a year to help keep them strong and healthy,” says Chris Styles, a partner at Style Roses. From late May onwards, feed weekly with either a liquid rose fertiliser or a liquid tomato fertiliser,” adds Stewart.Roses are very hungry plants and should therefore be fed regularly throughout their livesto ensure maximum blooms and growth, from first year plants through to 50 year oldramblers.We recommend a good feed of a nitrogen high feed like “ Top Rose Gold” after the late-winterprune in February, then feeding every two weeks throughout the flowering period with ahigh potash feed like “ Tomorite” or " Uncle Tom's Rose Tonic". Our long term rose aftercare guide is perfect for looking after roses in your garden and keeping them looking healthy and beautiful! How to look after roses A regular spray with a rose tonic such as Potassium Phosphite ( Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic) will help roses to keep healthy. Use alongside a proprietary feed during the growing season to keep your roses happy.

These and other organic additions can be added to a planting hole when planting new roses or crushed, chopped and spread around the roses in spring before you mulch around the area with your primary slow-release feed and mulch material. This is also something that you can make yourself at home, using any potassium-rich leaves from plants like comfrey or other dynamic accumulators of potassium. Mulching Roses It is best applied regularly at two to three monthly intervals during the dormant period followed by monthly applications during the leafing and flowering period. It is important to use regularly to keep disease spore at bay. Leaving the flower heads on would mean instead the rose will put all its efforts into producing rose hips with seeds inside for the rest of the summer and autumn and you will not get any further flushes of flowers in that year. With a sharp pair of Secateurs prune off the dead flowers to just above a leaf, cutting 2 or 3 leaves below the flower stalk where the stem growth is strong enough to support a new large bloom or truss of flowers Applying an annual mulch The other thing that’s really worth thinking about is applying a tonic. Now, this one is called Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic and it’s really brilliant for roses, but it’s also good for shrubs as well. Dilute it – you take off this screw cap here and then you squeeze the canister to fill up the little reservoir; and that gives you a measured dilutionFortunately, these favourites come in a wide range of varieties to suit almost any garden and they are generally relatively easy to grow. It is impossible to guarantee all plants are free of the pests as eggs are so small they cannot be seen with the naked eye, it takes less than 2 days for an aphid egg to become an egg laying adult and the female eggs are already pregnant before they hatch so it’s no wonder population numbers of greenfly and aphids can suddenly explode all over your roses! Severe infestations can actually weaken flowering stems so much that the flower buds simply wither away and don’t open. It will provide nutrients to the roots as it decomposes, act as a weed suppressant and help to retain moisture in the soil.”

Meeting roses’ nutritional needs and feeding roses what they need is one key concern for those who grow them. Our own native rose varieties are extremely resilient and hardy and can cope with a wide range of soil conditions. Our Sulphur Rose formulation is easy and convenient to use, simple sprinkle the Sulphur Rose directly into water, stir and apply Once the flower buds form, it is then best to switch to a potassium-rich organic liquid plant feed.These fertilisers will vastly improve the performance of your roses and eliminate most disease issues.” I always mulch roses with good quality homemade compost or manure after any other fertilisers are added in the spring. Applying Sulphur rose will ensure your roses remain healthy and produce a fabulous display of flowers all summer long. Simply apply to the stems, foliage and surrounding soil. This Rose Society UK book gives the reader more information about many different pests and diseases with colour pictures and proposed treatments. This book describes only the major pests affecting roses, whilst there are many chemical products on the market the Rose Society UK encourages environmentally friendly products. The key thing to remember about feeding roses is that roses take their nutrition from the soil or growing medium in which they grow and they need a good quality and fertile soil or growing medium to thrive.

We can maintain healthy soil by disturbing it as little as possible, protecting it with living roots, ground cover and mulches, and, of course, by gardening organically at all times. Feeding Roses Growing In The Ground As soon as spring arrives, plants start into vigorous growth and that needs to be supported by moisture from the soil, but also from plenty of nutrition. So, plant feeding is really crucial in the spring.I feed my roses annually with a granular feed like national growmore, tonk’s rose feed or fish blood and bone,” shares David Allison from the NSALG. Roses, like other plants, are a food source for garden pests which will need to be controlled if the plants are to perform well in the garden.