Fertilizing Roses

How To Fertilize Your Roses

Roses put on such an effort into flower production, so by fertilizing roses, you help the rose plants produce all those fabulous blooms.

Roses needs a steady supply of nutrients to bloom their best.

If you have just planted new roses, wait until the roses have flowered once, before fertilizing them.

Repeat blooming roses flower in cycles that I call flower flushes. So after each flower flush it would be appropriate to apply some fertilizer.

Established roses should be fertilized in early spring, and then every four weeks until late summer, when you should stop feeding the roses.

Oval Rose Fantasy Wreath

If your soil is very rich and loamy with composted manure and mulches, the simplest way to feed the roses is to give them a good dressing of composted manure twice a year; once in the spring and another in the summer.

I do not recommend using foilar feeds, because they involve a lot of work and give very little apparent benefit.

All balanced fertilizers contains nitrogen, and you'll notice that fertilizers for roses emphisize nitrogen.

Nitrogen, used to green up your lawn, will keep your roses green too. The nitrogen goes to the leaves of your rose bush, and generate energy that leads to bud formation, and of course more flowers.

So make sure you use a fertilizer with plenty of nitrogen.

The best rose fertilizers are complete and balanced with the following elements.

N (nitrogen): For enhancing the growth of leaves and stems.

P (phosphorous): For good flowering and strong root growth.

K (potassium): For overall good growth, vigor and disease resistance.

The numerical value on fertilizers for roses should be 5-9-6.

Always remember to deep water your roses before applying fertilizers.

Fertilizing roses is certainly worth the effort, and the reward is lots of beautiful rose blooms.

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