Planting a New Rose
For roses in a box:
if the dirt around the rose is wet enough to stay around the rose remove box. If it is too dry plant the rose with it still in the box. Dig a hole deep enough for the crown of the rose to be about 2 inches below the dirt. Put the rose or the box in the hole and fill halfway with dirt. Compact the dirt, I usually use my foot to do this. Fill the rest of the hole with water. Once the water is gone I put a hand full of Bone Meal around the rose. Put the rest of the dirt around the rose and compact it again. At this point I add a capfull of Systemic and scrape it into the dirt. Add water. Then pile dirt around the plant for a couple of weeks. Carefully remove the dirt that you piled around it after two weeks and it should have some new shoots growing.
For a bare root rose:
Dig hole the same but at the bottom of the hole add peat and dirt and form a cone and set the rose on that and distribute the roots evenly around the cone. Proceed as with a rose in a box. This is the only time I add bone meal or systemic during the season.
Spring Care
On already established roses, after carefully removing the dirt so that you don’t break off any new shoots, dig three little holes around the roses and add one handful of Bone Meal distributed evenly in the three holes. Cover holes. Add a capful of systemic around the top and scratch into soil. This is after you have removed the dirt and cut off bad stems.
Growing Season Care
I spay them about every 10 days with Orthenex Insect and Disease Control to prevent bugs and black spot. In between the ten days I spay them with Miracle-Gro Fertilizer. There is also a bloom builder that I spray them with. This can be done at the same time as the fertilizer. When you cut off the dead roses they should be cut at a diagonal just above the second five leafed stem. Make sure you put tar on the cut you make or bugs will bore down into the cut and kill the stem.
Fall Care
Somewhere between mid October to end of October, I have been out the first week of November in the snow doing this, cut back all stems to about a foot tall. Pile dirt with peat mixed in around the rose until the dirt is about six to eight inches up the rose. Then forget about them till spring.