Gardening tip - roses

The rose is one of my many favourites, yes I know you can only have one favourite,, but it is like with children how can you choose a favourite child….
There are so many different types of roses:

• Border rose
• Hedge forming rose
• Standard roses
• Climbing and rambling roses
• Roses for in containers
• Cutting roses ....and so on!

Roses come in nearly every colour under the sun, shapes from single rose to doubles and I am sure I have seen quadruple flowers.

Planting Roses; make sure that the hole you dig is very large around the root, about a foot in width.
Dig some very mature manure through the soil, someone told me that goose manure is very good for roses.

Feeding roses; I recommend using a good organic specialised rose feed at the start of the flowering season in early May. Old coffee grounds are great, make sure that you separate all the coffee, no clumps because the water will then just pass through the coffee without releasing the goodness.

Pruning Roses: prune roses in February(January is just too cold for me to venture out!). Reduce each stalk by about one third of the rose - if leaf growth is a bit weak you could cut a bit more, up to two thirds.Prune climbing rose stems that had new flowers on them to about 15cm.