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Dispelling the myths about growing roses

© Lorraine Flanigan

Each year, the Toronto Master Gardeners host a day-long gardening seminar that's open to the public as well as to Master Gardeners in Ontario. It's an opportunity to learn about up-to-date gardening techniques and this year's seminar, held at the Civic Garden Centre in Toronto this past Sunday, was packed with information and demonstrations.

You would have thought that with all the books and articles written on roses, there would be nothing new under the sun that we haven't all heard at least a hundred times. Well, in one of the three presentations that afternoon, Judith Adam fooled us all by letting us in on the secrets of growing roses in climates colder than California from whence many of the myths about growing roses originate - a very different environment from that of southern Ontario.

Myth #1: Prune roses in the fall

Many a book has recommended pruning roses back to about 24" or so in the fall, then following up with a spring pruning. This is all well and good says Judith, if you garden where winters are mild. But here in Ontario, winter kill is a fact of life. Canes will die back to the same extent whether they are three feet long or a scant 24". The difference is that the longer the cane, the more green, living tissue is preserved. So, wait until spring to prune your roses.

Myth #2: When planting, arrange roots over a central cone

You've all seen the classic pictures of a planting hole with a central cone. The idea is to spread the roots gracefully over the cone, I guess to provide some support and to encourage roots to spread. I'm not sure whose bright idea this was, but I checked, and it's in my copy of the Chatelaine Gardening Book from the '50's and it's in a pamphlet put together by the Canadian Rose Society too. But as Judith pointed out, the only way to create a cone of earth in the middle of the planting hole is to compact the earth. This spells death to roses faster than just about anything else you could do. As Judith observes, roses are "princesses" of the garden: they demand lots of air circulation around their roots. Soil that's been compacted contains no air spaces, and no air spaces means sulky roses. Instead, Judith advises us to remove fifty percent of the earth dug from a planting hole at least 24" wide by 24" deep, and replace it with organic amendments such as manure, compost, peat moss, sand, gravel or pine needles. (The natural curve of the pine needles traps air in the soil.)

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