- Roses are a plant, honestly,
I never thought I'd grow in my entire gardening journey. But as you can see, I've changed my mind, and in today's video, I'm
gonna change yours too. The rose family is insane. In fact, the family itself, rosaceae, is one of the six most
economically important families in the world, and you would not believe
the plants that are included. You've got apples, pears, quince,
loquats, almonds, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries,
strawberries, blackberries, and of course roses. Rose cultivation is thought
to have originated in China about 5,000 years ago, but the species themselves are estimated to be like
35 million years old. So a fantastically old
plant that was cultivated in the Middle East
during the Roman Empire, as well as throughout history. As a symbol, roses in human
society are so popular and so ubiquitous that in fact they were used for war. In the 15th Century, in England, you have the War of the Roses. You have York on one side,
Lancaster on the other; white roses for York,
red roses for Lancaster. But as a symbol, as well as as a currency in
the 17th Century in Europe, you've got roses and rose water. Both were legal tender in Europe and based on what's behind me, let's just say your boy's
an old English billionaire. When you think about growing roses, certainly when I thought about it, I thought, you know, you need to be an old English grandmother in the countryside, lovingly caring for these over decades, to have the experience and knowledge to know how to grow roses successfully. And I'm here happily to say
that that really is not true. There are roses that can
grow pretty much anywhere; any climate, all the
way down to zone three, all the way up to zone 10 plus. And there are 30,000
different cultivars of roses in the world, at least that we know of right now. I'm sure there's more
coming every single day. And speaking of, we have one
right here from Heirloom Roses called Rosalina. This one's interesting. It's a rugosa style rose
and it's dew-resistant. It goes from zones three to ten. The thing that's
interesting about this rose as well as all the
other ones you see here, is it's what's called an own root rose. A quick rose botany lesson. This actually applies to a lot
of your fruit trees as well. Similar principle, but basically when you go
to any sort of big box store or production rose place, what you'll find are what
are called grafted roses. So there's a root stock,
a root system below, which has a particular type of benefit. Maybe it's a little more
disease resistant or something, or maybe it's just a cheap and
easy root stock that exists and they'll take a
variety and graft it on. So everything that grows
above the soil is the rose that you actually want. Now, in this case, with Rosalina here, as well as all the other
roses from Heirloom Roses, which are the sponsor of today's video, it's an own root rose, meaning that the entire plant genetically, is the exact same plant. And what that means is
that any sort of shoots that are coming up from the root area are just gonna be the same rose. You don't have to worry about
doing any pruning down below to make sure that you're only
preserving grafted tissue up above. And then also that graft point, as with any sort of grafting situation, it is a chink in the armor of the rose which can lead to some issues. There are ways to mitigate that. Now, I like both types of
roses, grafted and own root, but I've never really
experimented with own root before. And I think it's really
interesting that no matter what, I know I'm getting this
beautiful Rosalina rose flower, no matter what shoot comes
out of the soil here. Let's talk rose types. There are a lot of different types, a lot of different types. But let's start off with
the most popular one which would be a hybrid tea rose. This one here is called Black
Pearl from Heirloom Roses. Gorgeous variety. But hybrid tea are the most popular, probably because the flowers are massive. It is a huge bloom,
gorgeous on long stems. The plants are about
three to six feet tall. They need some winter protection. Most of them bloom in spring or fall, and it's just the classic. It is a rose's rose if there ever was one. Next up you've got florabunda roses. They're generally
derived from hybrid teas. This one right here is called Hot Cocoa. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous one. Great for pots, great for cuttings. The primary difference here
is they'll be a little smaller than your hybrid teas, but also the flowers
grow more in clusters, rather than singles, and they're really good cutting roses. The next two are grandiflora, so that's gonna be a
cross between hybrid tea and florabunda. Starting to get confusing
here, but just another variety, looks amazing. Great category of roses. And then for small space
growers, apartments, patios, smaller little containers or hedgerows, or something like that, you've got miniature roses. So they're basically just
bred to be small versions of classic roses. Not gonna get more than
about two feet tall. A great thing to use to line
a path or just put in a pot. Next you have my current favorite
category, as you can see, which is a climbing, rambling style rose. I think what's important here is that it doesn't actually climb, much like a pea would, with its tendril that affixes itself to some sort of structure. Pulls itself up. These, they have thorns, they'll sort of stick their way up things. But what we did here with
this Cecile Brunner rose, which is more of a traditional rose here, is kind of weaved it through this trellis and then it filled itself out
and looks absolutely amazing. The one that we've got from Heirloom Roses is called Fourth of July. I think you can see why it's named that. This one gets to about
nine or ten feet tall. Gorgeous variety. But a climbing rose to me, especially if you're limited
on horizontal sprawling space, it is absolutely the biggest
statement I have in my garden right now, and I highly recommend it. Next, you've got the shrub roses. So if you have the opposite problem, you don't have a lot of vertical space, but you want to create a hedge
row or a shrubbing style, then these ones are great. Very weather tolerant, maybe a little more disease resistant than average varieties. Two from Heirloom Roses,
Westerland and Louise Clements. To me, I'm actually thinking
about putting some of these in areas where maybe I
wanna discourage someone from walking; maybe right along a path that I don't want someone reaching into, or something like that. So another way to kind of think
about roses as landscaping and human design elements in a garden. Let's talk rose care, and I
have to show this one off. This is Fragrant Cloud. It is for sure the sweetest smelling rose I've personally ever smelled. Almost smells like rose
candy or rose jelly. This is a rose that I planted
a couple of years ago now, and let's talk about how to make sure you're gonna get some of
these beautiful blooms. You can see here I'm in
an area that gets full sun throughout the day, good air flow, good air circulation, and the soil is nice and fertile. It's not too tough, it's not too sandy. It's in a really good spot. And let's talk about
now placing these roses, 'cause I have four of them
here at the homestead. I've spaced these out at
least two or three feet from one another, so I've planned for their future growth. I know they're going to bush up and kind of fill in this area, so I gave them that space to do so. And then when you're talking
about actually getting them in the ground, what I did is brush away the mulch layer, and I wanna dig a hole large
enough for that pot to go in, right? So you do sort of a pot fit
there and then get it in there, and just make sure you
do not go too low here. Basically match where
the soil is in the pot to the soil in the ground. You actually might want to even
stamp that soil down around. Make sure there's no air
pockets, throw mulch on. Then I give it a nice healthy watering, and I'm really looking for this
kind of growth to come out. I'm looking for new shoots,
new bud development. And then I know I've
transplanted successfully For container rows, you're probably gonna want
to go with a miniature if you're in a pot at least of this size. Some of the other ones
that we've talked about, you actually want a decent size pot 'cause they can go quite big. But let's just say I've
got a miniature here. What I wanna do is fill this
up with a third compost, a third potting soil, a third manure, pretty solid mix for roses there. A clay pot's better than plastic. It's gonna make sure that
that soil gets to seep out and moisture can escape. Good drainage hole here
on the bottom as well. And then you just wanna fill it up, much like you would put it in the ground. The thing you wanna watch out
for, if it's a grafted rose, if you're planting something
like this from Heirloom Roses, it's an own root rose, you don't really have to worry as much. But if there was a graft here, you don't want to bury that graft point. And ideally, something
I learned from my days managing the small
orchard that I have here, is you want to face that
graft point to the north. So away from the sun, so there's no sun damage
kind of beating down on it. But yeah, I mean all you're
gonna do is just plop it in, match it to the top, water it in well, throw some mulch on and you're good to go. Let's talk fertilizing these bad boys. This guy's gotten some love as he's made his way up this arch here. So what I like to do, early spring, what you want to do is
move your mulch layer away. I've got a fair bit of wood chips here. So in this case, this is
an in-ground planting, so I'm gonna make sure I expose that soil, and I'm using Rose Tone here. You want to use something
a little higher nitrogen earlier on in the season. It really isn't that big a deal though. And so I'm gonna throw a
healthy few handfuls down here, and then every two to four
weeks or so, I'm gonna do this if I'm really caring for my
roses throughout the season. As you get towards fall, that's of course when you're
not gonna see as much blooming and as much of vegetative growth. Then what you want to do
is go in with something like a bone meal; support the blooms for the next season. But after I've done this, I
want to get into watering roses, which is really important
when you're planting them in for the first time. When you're watering your roses, I like to kind of think of
it as a meditative experience because it can take some time
to really penetrate that soil and get the water deep down there, especially for an establishing
ground plant like this one. But if you've just put
the plants in the ground, water it daily or almost daily, until you start to see it established, until you start to see
some new growth come out, then drop it down to a
couple of times per week; two or three times. And you really need to
remember with roses, make sure you are modulating
that based on the temperature; so the hotter it gets, the more
you're gonna want to water. Just make sure you support these guys. Putting it on irrigation,
also a pretty good call. Something that freaks a
lot of rose growers out is the pruning process. It can be a little intimidating. I would recommend some gloves if you've got some thorny roses. But a couple guidelines. This is something I did a
little earlier in the season. It's a bit too late to
be doing it right now 'cause obviously I have roses and I have green growth coming out. But what you want to do, the
three Ds are always applicable: dead, disease, damage, remove
all of that immediately. If you have any leaves still
showing up in late winter, early spring, you may want to remove those ones. But what you want to do
is if you're making a cut, come in at a 45 degree angle. So I'll show you a cut right here. Come in like this, and you wanna make that cut,
boom, clean cut like that. You're gonna get water falling off instead of pooling at the top. It's a small thing, but it matters. And you can also put a
pruning sealer on here if you really wanna make sure that your roses aren't
susceptible to disease. There's a lot of different things like fire blight, for
example, can hit a rose. If you wanna make sure
you don't deal with that, I would seal it off. But again, you're just sort
of cutting and shaping it down at that beginning of the season for the growth that you
actually see right now. So embrace the rose
grandmother grower within you. I certainly have, and start
getting into these this season. It's so so fun. I'm excited to plant the own
root roses from Heirloom Roses. Again, thanks to them
for sponsoring the video. You'll see us toss these in the garden on our epic Home Sitting channel. And until next time, my friends, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
